Fairfax chairman rejects O'Reilly 'daisy chain'

Friday 16th November 2001

John Fairfax Holdings chairman Brian Powers has issued a blunt rebuff to Sir Anthony's O'Reilly's Irish newspaper empire, saying his company would not welcome a takeover offer from debt-ridden groups "with suspect capital structures."

"It would be very sad if we ended up at the bottom of one of those daisy chains," Mr Powers was reported in the Australian Financial Review as saying.

Sir Anthony's Dublin-based Independent News & Media has announced plans to sell its wholly owned New Zealand subsidiary Wilson & Horton, which publishes the New Zealand Herald, to 41%-owned Australian group APN News & Media.

The move has been widely interpreted as positioning APN for a tilt at Fairfax, whose "Rivers of Gold" publishing empire includes the Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne's the Age, and the AFR.

At the Fairfax annual meeting last week, Mr Powers referred hypothetically to a takeover bid from "Izzy O'Black."

The name is a composite of Canadian media moguls Conrad Black and Izzy Asper and Dr O'Reilly.

"I am inherently suspicious of taking paper from a company like that," Mr Powers was reported as saying.

"You'd take that paper with a great deal of trepidation."

Shareholders rejected by a narrow margin a Fairfax proposal that shareholder approval be required for proportional takeover bids.

Some 72% of proxies cast were in favour but the measure needed 75% approval.

Some institutional shareholders reportedly saw the measure as a way of blocking INM from taking a major Fairfax stake.

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