FAIRFAX Media’s largest shareholder and Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart is believed to be considering buying Fairfax if she can find the right leaders to run it. The Australian can reveal Mrs Rinehart has approached business associates for suggestions on who could better manage or sit on the board of the newspaper publisher in the event that she did decide to launch a takeover bid for Fairfax.
…One person Mrs Rinehart would consider to take a leading role in Fairfax is former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett.
It is understood Mrs Rinehart approached Mr Kennett to take a Fairfax board position two years ago but he declined, telling friends the company was a basket case.
Correct. There is no saving Fairfax. It’s legacy cost structures are based upon an advertising model that is dead and buried. It’s culture is superior and change averse, all wrong for the new frontier. It’s productivity is woeful.
It’s a fruitless search unless Gina wants so to see it broken into bits and sold off, which, if her other objective is to just get it out of the way, would work nicely.
The idea of that the two sides of Australia’s media duopoly could become the Rupert Murdoch versus Gina Rinehart show should give pause to all but the most hardened plutocratic courtiers.
