While insiders speculate about the future of APN's Australian regional newspapers, hiving off its New Zealand interests is back on the agenda.
It's close to two months since chief executive Ciaran Davis announced plans to divest the ARM regional publishing business in Australia, and the names of a number of suitors have been bandied about since. Among them have been part-owner News Corp Australia (of which more later) and Anchorage Capital, whose managing director has been at pains to deny blame for the collapse of the Dick Smith electronics chain which it bought and floated.
Among APN staffers, we're told the name of Warren Buffett - the Berkshire Hathaway billionaire who has already gathered a clutch of unconsidered print media trifles in the USA - is being mentioned as a favourite.
BH Media now owns 32 daily newspapers - and a host of other media interests - following the acquisition of the Free-Lance Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia, at the end of last year from an investment firm which had in turn picked it up during bankruptcy proceedings the year before. But would Buffett (pictured) want to add interests in Australia?
The answer may lie in reports this week that APN is again looking to unload its merged NZME. print-and-radio business in New Zealand. The well-informed Australian - which has former APN chief executive Michael Miller as executive chairman of its Australian News Corp business - said on Monday that a demerger of NZME. was now the favourite option and likely to be "a firm decision" before the annual meeting on May 11.
Rather than an IPO or direct sale, a demerger - with an issue of shares to existing holders - addresses the Kiwi quandary of what to do when you've merged attractive and less attractive business units and then chickened out of a separate float.
We've written before about the moves which have brought together APN's print media - including flagship the New Zealand Herald - and radio interests, including combining newsrooms into an impressive if expensive, new centre. There's the suggestion that Davis, who is a radio man at heart, might have done it differently or not at all, and one of the plan's architects, NZME. chief executive Jane Hastings will no longer lead the initiative, having resigned somewhat suddenly last month.
The Australian reported that two-thirds of NZME's revenue (and 72 per cent of EBIT) is expected to have come from the group's newspapers, and while untangling the merger is unlikely, all options would be open to a new owner. Which brings us back to News Corp, which could quite easily emerge with greater control than its already appears to have.
Or of course - with the prospect of a little more to make the 22-hour flights across the south Pacific from Omaha worthwhile - there's Warren Buffett.
Peter Coleman