A landmark merger between Australian broadcaster Nine Entertainment Co and newspaper group Fairfax Media Ltd yesterday won regulatory approval, clearing the way for the creation of a media giant across TV, print, video streaming and digital media.
The deal, announced in July, is “not likely to substantially lessen competition in any market,” the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said
The commission acknowledged that the merger would leave only four big media companies “intensely focusing on Australian news,” but it said that the advent of the Internet had brought in many online news players to “provide some degree of competitive restraint.”
The merger was the first deal under a controversial media ownership law passed last year, which removed restrictions that prevented companies from owning newspapers, radio and free-to-air TV stations in the same city.
Major players in the market had long pressed for the change, arguing that the rules were outdated and did not account for digital media platforms and new actors, such as Alphabet Inc’s Google and Facebook Inc, which have syphoned off the lion’s share of advertising revenue in the media sector.
The commission’s decision opens the door to further consolidation in the Australian media market, already dominated by a small group of broadcasters and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
News Corp, the country’s largest newspaper group, has already begun developing cross-platform deals with free-to-air TV companies and many analysts believe it could in turn merge with Seven West, which operates the country’s most popular TV network.
The Nine-Fairfax deal, in which Nine is the dominant partner, includes Nine’s free-to-air TV network, Fairfax’s radio interests and mastheads — including the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne — and a suite of digital assets, including the highly profitable real-estate Web site domain.com.aus.
The new company is to be called Nine, with Fairfax ceasing to exist, drawing the curtain on a brand that has been an Australian staple for more than 170 years.
The Nine takeover must still be approved by Fairfax shareholders at a meeting on Nov.19.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained