Latest news with #SineadBoucher
RNZ News
14-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
More managed decline? Or settling on a sustainable structure?
Greg Hywood, chief executive of Fairfax Media and some of the company's top newspapers. CeBIT Australia (CC BY-SA 4.0) CeBIT Australia Photo: CeBIT Australia When Stuff announced it was merging its digital wing with Trade Me last week, things had gone full circle. New Zealand's biggest publisher of news had bought the online marketplace itself in 2006 for more than $700m. Back then it was called Fairfax Media NZ, a subsidiary of the giant Australian news publisher which parted with $1.2 billion to buy the The Press, Dominion Post and Sunday Star Times and others. By 2012, TradeMe was sold off in bits to ease debts and falling revenue. And six years later, Greg Hywood negotiated a merger of Fairfax Media and TV broadcaster Nine Network. It created an Australasian news titan but extinguished the Fairfax name. The email Fairfax staff received as the merger news broke. Photo: screenshot "The best outcome for our journalism, for our employees, our business and of course our shareholders," Greg Hywood said at the time. But the New Zealand publishing - now branded as Stuff - wasn't on the radar at the time. The 95-page merger document only mentioned Fairfax's New Zealand holdings once. And there was no sign of Stuff on a chart showing the logos of the new big beast called Nine Entertainment. Less than two years later, Nine Entertainment sold its apparently unwanted New Zealand branch for just $1 to its chief editor Sinead Boucher. Five years after that, sole owner Boucher is now selling half of Stuff's digital business back to Trade Me. In the same week her former boss in Australia, Greg Hywood, stepped down from his role as chairman of Free TV, the umbrella group for Free to Air TV broadcasting in Australia. Sydney-based Hywood became the ultimate boss of Stuff and its papers here when he rejoined Fairfax Media as CEO in 2010. "Editorially and in the day to day business sense, the organisation did what it needed to do - and frankly it was doing really quite well," Hywood told Mediawatch. "The New Zealand assets were important assets and we kept a close eye on them. They were managed very well. "I was surprised that it was given back for a dollar because I always thought. . the New Zealand business was probably in better shape than the regional business here, which was sold for A$120m by Nine. "Good luck to Sinead and the team with what they've subsequently done." But if Hywood and Boucher had had their way in 2016, the deal could never have happened. Both backed Fairfax Media NZ merging with its big New Zealand rival APN, the publishers of the New Zealand Herald (these days called NZME). They said it was essential for their survival. The plan was knocked back by the Commerce Commission who reckoned it would be too much of a monopoly here. And it would have created one single publisher of news instead of the two we have now - Stuff and NZME - with district editorial approaches offering readers choice. "In retrospect I'm still supportive of it. Ninety percent of the growth in advertising in both New Zealand and Australia goes to Google and Facebook - and traditional media are fighting over the other 10 percent," Hywood said. Fairfax and APN / NZME pursued the process in court for three fruitless years. "You really needed scale to be able to compete and it was a question about diversity or scale. While they have both survived, would they have been able to invest in journalism in the merged entities (more) than what's currently the case? Hywood said. "I can't answer that, but it was a very legitimate exercise to deal with the structural change going on in the industry and making sure that the journalism would survive." "By the time I got back to Fairfax in 2010 as CEO, the consequence of investing so heavily in newspapers had put the company in the position where we had to sell TradeMe to reduce the level of debt. The print revenue was dropping at 10 percent a year, which was $100 million a year," Hywood said. Former All Black captain Divid Kirk was the CEO who bought Trade Me for Fairfax in 2006. "That was a very good decision by David - to digitise the revenue streams of the business," Hywood said. Ads for jobs, homes and cars were the so-called 'rivers of gold' - practically a licence for newspapers to print money - as well as news - in the days before the Internet. Hywood said back in the 1970s Fairfax had its own garage and a staff of mechanics just to service the executives' cars. "Things were great, and were certainly fun... if you were fortunate enough to be a journalist in those days. But there's no point being what I might call an Anzac of the 70s." "As the years went by and we hit the Internet period, the role of the journalist was less certain. But the fundamental role of a journalist has always been the same - having a good crack at making sure you get to the kernel of the truth." Many still know Hywood in Australia as 'the man who swung the axe.' Nineteen hundred people got made redundant at Fairfax in basically a single day in 2012. "That is what we had to do. You don't feel great making decisions like that, but it's a bit like a surgeon with a dying patient on the operating table." "The direction the company meant the banks would have been knocking on the door and sold it off and broken it up. It was not going to survive in that form. You've got to do some radical things to save the patient's life." The closure of printing plants followed - and outsourcing of production to New Zealand. That prompted strikes and newspaper workers there holding signs like 'Not happy Bro' 'BAAAA-d move' against a backdrop of sheep. "We offshored the sub-editing process and focused on the local reporting because we had to have the journalism. That was our responsibility." The New Zealand Herald reports the news that its rival has gone into business with Trade Me. Photo: New Zealand Herald Fairfax in Australia established the property news and information platform Domain, recently the subject of a bid of NZ$3b from a US real estate firm. But the market leader across the ditch - - is currently valued around $30b. Is Stuff's partnership with TradeMe a smart move to secure its news and journalism? "I'm not close enough to the Stuff and TradeMe merger... but from a distance it looks like a pretty good idea. Well done to Sinead and the team," Hywood said. "The whole point of the Fairfax and Nine merger was really to get a media company of scale with a property marketing platform to enable it to compete. Domain is a distant number two, but... with the correct investment and the decisions, the ability to take on was always there. That hasn't occurred but the property marketing market is extremely lucrative." Companies like Fairfax Media and Stuff have been in the business of managing decline for the last 20 years. Have they now found a sustainable but smaller-scale model based on lucrative digital property platforms? "I don't think it will ever calm down. It's a bit like a raging river where you've got to hop from island to island. You can't just rely on content and advertising," Hywood said. "Also, government has always been slow to adapt to what's going on. And it's got to really deeply think about what the right regulatory environment is... to get New Zealand stories in New Zealand, Australian stories in Australia and the news and information that is required." "The private sector's got to get on its bike and build the businesses. And the government has to provide a fair, and sustainable regulatory environment so that everyone can get on with it." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Kiwiblog
05-06-2025
- Business
- Kiwiblog
Will Stuff staff get their 10%?
Stuff owner Sinead Boucher has sold 50% of Stuff Digital to Trade Me, which in turn is 100% owned by Apax Partners, a British private equity firm with around US$77 billion in assets. Good on Boucher. I have no issue with foreign investment in media companies. The discipline they may bring to Stuff Digital could be very good for them. In 2021, Stuff reported: Stuff owner and chief executive Sinead Boucher is gifting a 10 per cent share of the media firm to the company's close to 900 staff. The stake in the company will be transferred to a trust controlled by employee representatives, rather than the shares being directly owned by staff members. The arrangement means staff would receive through the trust a share of any dividends Stuff pays out, and 10 per cent of the sale proceeds if Stuff was later sold or listed, she said. This never happened, as it was later modified to happening if any shares were sold or exited. Presumably this has happened, so we will see 10% of Stuff Digital transferred to a staff trust? Radio NZ report: After Boucher bought Stuff for $1 in 2020, she told staff that a 10 percent stake of the company would be put into a staff trust in the event that the business was sold or listed. A spokesperson said that, while there was still some time until the deal was to be completed, it was Boucher's expectation that a payment would be made into the staff trust. A payment? Would it be a payment equal to one fifth of what Trade Me paid? Shouldn't it be non-voting shares of 10% of Stuff Digital, rather than a payment? After all, that is what was promised?
NZ Herald
04-06-2025
- Business
- NZ Herald
Media Insider podcast: Stuff's Trade Me deal - will staff share in chief executive Sinead Boucher's lucrative payday?; New NZME chair Steven Joyce opens up in first major interview
Steven Joyce sits down for his first major interview since becoming the chair of NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB owner NZME, and we ask Stuff owner Sinead Boucher whether her staff will also share in the rewards of this week's Trade Me deal, as previously promised. Stuff boss Sinead Boucher
RNZ News
03-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Trade Me sale will not alter commitment to news
Stuff CEO Sinead Boucher and Trade Me CEO Anders Skoe Photo: Supplied / TradeMe The owner of media company Stuff says it remains committed to news despite the sale of its digital arm. The company has agreed to sell 50 percent of Stuff Digital , which runs the Stuff website and ThreeNews, to online marketplace Trade Me. Under the agreement, Stuff's property section will become Trade Me Property branded, with listings, ads and some content shared across both platforms. Stuff Group chief executive Sinead Boucher told Morning Report the change was about expanding and diversifying the business. "We've done a very good job over the last five years of securing our own future. But we're in a industry and in a world where there is lots of change, lots of things still to be done and lots of opportunity," she said. "We want to make sure we're in the best position to harness that and keep growing." Since last July, Stuff has been providing an evening news bulletin, replacing the former Newshub news service, after the company announced an agreement with Warner Bros Discovery New Zealand. "There isn't going to be any changes as a result of this deal to any of our products or our staff of people," Boucher said. "Whatever happens to that, that's up to Warner Brothers, it's not up to Stuff." Boucher said she had no concerns about the future business moves of Trade Me's owners. Trade Me was bought by private equity company Apax Partners in 2019. Stuff's mastheads, The Post, the Press and the Waikato Times, its events business and Neighbourly were not included in the deal. Last year the media company was divided in two - Stuff Digital and Masthead Publishing which runs newspaper brands and its own websites. "[Masthead Publishing] is also a very digitally focused business," Boucher said. "It has spent the last couple of years building up very strong subscription audiences. We have re-positioned The Post for example as a national publication around politics, business, economics, etc. That's continuing to go really well for us." Boucher did not rule out a future sale of the mastheads but said she had no immediate plans to do so. "We're in media, nobody should ever say 'always' or 'nevers', but that's certainly not on my agenda at the moment." The property section of Stuff would be clearly delineated, Boucher said. Meanwhile, former editor of the New Zealand Herald and media commentator Gavin Ellis said the Herald had been drifting of late and there had been a clear signal that there needed to be more media experience on the board. He was commenting after media company NZME, which owns the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB, revamped its board . Canadian businessman and activist shareholder Jim Grenon launched a bid to replace the board with himself and three associates. He ended up with a seat on the board and former National government minister Steven Joyce has taken over as chair. Ellis welcomed the appointment of Joyce who brought not only political expertise but also a lengthy association with the radio industry. He was a lot more "nuanced" than people realised and would be good for the board. However, he was less sure about the impact of Grenon and his attitude to editorial matters. "New Zealand media for as long as I can remember have been free of political interfence from their boards." Editorial independence was "a precious thing to preserve". "I think that anybody who crosses that editorial line does so at their peril. I think the paper would suffer and levels of trust would suffer." No assurances had been given so far, Ellis said, and the Herald's soon to be created Editorial Advisory Board should have a binding charter which should be made public.
RNZ News
03-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Stuff owner on Trade Me buying half of Stuff Digital
business media 7:50 am today Trade Me is set to buy half of Stuff Digital in what is likely to be a multi-million-dollar deal. Stuff owner Sinead Boucher spoke to Corin Dann.
