See later story at
http://www.gxpress.net/article/4260/apn-picks-news-to-be-queenslands-single-print-voice
Social media platform Fetch Plus is a rival to News Corp to acquire APN's Australian regional newspaper business, its flagship masthead says.
While a report in The Australian says News "has long been seen as the natural owner of ARM" (by whom, we wonder), it has appointed advisor Aquasia on the bid, "determined not to pay too much for the assets".
The report looks like another classic case of News negotiating by media report, suggesting that "sources" think it unlikely that APN "would achieve the $50 million price tag it had been chasing" and mentioning the possibility of a US-based private equity firm also being interested.
APN and advisor Credit Suisse are reported to have been assessing the offers last weekend after bids closed on Friday.
Apart from The Chronicle in Toowoomba and The Gympie Times, the APN ARM mastheads include several in the fast-growing Sunshine Coast - including the Sunshine Coast Daily and the Noosa News - where News Corp bid for a market after acquiring the Noosa Journal, then closing its three titles there. Synergies between these and big-city News regionals such as the Gold Coast Bulletin and Cairns Post are obvious, but not so obvious as with Fairfax Media, which has properties immediately adjacent to APN's coastal strip but is unlikely to have been bidding.
Pity APN's NZME. unit wasn't in a position to look at the assets, after APN got shareholder approval to demerge it, ahead of a likely merger with Fairfax Media's New Zealand properties. Very likely the boys and girls from across the ditch would know just how to make a profit from it.
Incidentally, APN has said shareholders will get one NZME Limited share for each APN share they own... meaning News Corp will hold 14.9 per cent of the new entity as well, at least until the impact of the Fairfax NZ merger.
Peter Coleman