Australia’s richest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, is considering taking over respected Fairfax Media Ltd out of frustration at its direction, a report said yesterday.
Rinehart is already a major shareholder in the newspaper, radio and digital firm that publishes the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and the Age in Melbourne.
However, rival the Australian newspaper, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, yesterday reported that Rinehart had approached business associates for suggestions on who could better manage Fairfax if she decided to take it over.
“It is frustrating for Gina, who has had enormous success in business, to be watching one of her more public investments going so badly,” an unnamed source told the paper.
The Australian said that Rinehart, who has a 14.99 percent stake in Fairfax, would be more likely to take over the company if she could find an executive who could improve its earnings.
“She genuinely wants the company to do well and needs people who can go in and fix it,” the source said.
“There’s a question over how long she can tolerate seeing Fairfax heading the way it’s going without taking action or getting out,” the source said.
Although a major shareholder, Rinehart has been unable to secure a seat on the Fairfax board for herself. However, Fairfax chairman Roger Corbett has allowed Jack Cowin, founder and chairman of Competitive Foods Australia and a friend of Rinehart’s, a place on the board.
Rinehart’s A$20.01 billion (US$18.8 billion) fortune stems from her late father’s iron ore firm, which she took over in 1992 and which she is credited with expanding in Western Australia and Queensland.
She surprised when she entered the media sector in late 2010, taking stakes in commercial television station Ten Network and Fairfax.
However, these have been lean years for the media sector, with Fairfax in 2012 announcing it was sacking hundreds of staff and putting its newspapers behind a paywall as it struggled with the transition to digital given sliding print advertising and circulation revenues.
In August last year, Fairfax posted an annual loss of A$16.4 million, a big improvement over losses of A$2.7 billion the previous fiscal year, but not enough to stop the company proposing axing 70 more jobs in May, prompting journalists go on a 24-hour strike.
Fairfax had no comment on the article in the Australian.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS