One of New Zealand’s largest media organizations is being sold for a single dollar to its chief executive, the owners announced yesterday.
The organization Stuff prints many of the nation’s daily newspapers and runs a popular news Web site of the same name. It employs about 900 staff, including 400 journalists.
Owned by Australia’s Nine Entertainment Co, Stuff faced financial challenges before the coronavirus pandemic struck and has since seen advertising revenues plunge.
Photo: AP / Stuff
In a statement to the Australian stock market, Nine Entertainment said Stuff would be sold to chief executive Sinead Boucher in a management buyout deal that would be completed by the end of the month.
“We have always said that we believe it is important for Stuff to have local ownership and it is our firm view that this is the best outcome for competition and consumers in New Zealand,” Nine Entertainment chief executive Hugh Marks said.
Boucher said she has been “blown away” by the positive feedback she has been receiving about the purchase.
“I feel really happy, relieved and proud. It’s been a really intense couple of weeks getting to the finish line,” she said.
Boucher, 49, began her career as a reporter for The Press newspaper in Christchurch and later helped lead some of the company’s digital innovations.
She said she has no immediate plans for any staff reductions or newspaper closures, but added the ownership change is not a silver bullet to cure the issues that Stuff and other media companies are facing.
Boucher said she would look to increase revenues from online readers.
Stuff last month set up an option for readers to donate money.
Boucher said she is purchasing Stuff through a limited liability company and is working through the details of a plan to transition the ownership by giving staff a direct stake as shareholders in the company.
The deal brings to an end the efforts of rival media company NZME to buy Stuff. Discussions between the two companies turned acrimonious and ended up in the hands of lawyers.
The New Zealand High Court last week declined an interim injunction sought by NZME that could have delayed the sale to Boucher.
Nine Entertainment said that it would retain ownership of a printing plant in Wellington and lease it back to Stuff. It would also get some of the profits from the recent sale of company offshoot Stuff Fibre, an Internet provider.
Most New Zealand media companies have been struggling since the pandemic struck. Stuff has temporarily cut employees’ pay, while NZME has announced plans to cut 200 jobs.
LIMITED IMPACT: Investor confidence was likely sustained by its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as only less advanced chips are made in Nanjing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) saw its stock price close steady yesterday in a sign that the loss of the validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing, China, fab should have a mild impact on the world’s biggest contract chipmaker financially and technologically. Media reports about the waiver loss sent TSMC down 1.29 percent during the early trading session yesterday, but the stock soon regained strength and ended at NT$1,160, unchanged from Tuesday. Investors’ confidence in TSMC was likely built on its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as Chinese customers contributed about 9 percent to TSMC’s revenue last
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp, yesterday said that revenue last month rose 10.61 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid continued front-loading orders for artificial intelligence (AI) server racks. Consolidated revenue expanded to NT$606.51 billion (US$19.81 billion) last month from NT$548.31 billion a year earlier, marking the highest ever in August, the company said in a statement. On a monthly basis, revenue was down 1.2 percent from NT$613.86 billion. Hon Hai, which is also a major iPhone assembler, added that its electronic components division saw significant revenue growth last month, boosted
RSS