Latest news with #JimGrenon
National Business Review
5 days ago
- Business
- National Business Review
NZME reJoyce, RNZ dividends, Polk folklore, Metroglass on blast
NZME's AGM has long been circled on Private Bin's calendar. Apart from the elite shithousery of Stuff and Trade Me announcing a deal on the morning of a rival's meeting, the main event was all a bit, well, boring. Canadian agitator and 13% shareholder Jim Grenon last month struck a deal which Want to read more? It's easy. Choose your best value subscription option Student Exclusive FREE offer for uni students studying at a New Zealand university (valued at $499). View terms and conditions. Individual Group membership NBR Marketplace Smartphone Only Subscription NZ$29.95 / monthly Monthly Premium Online Subscription NZ$49.95 / monthly Smartphone Only Annual Subscription NZ$299.00 / yearly Yearly Premium Online Subscription NZ$499.00 / yearly Premium Group Membership 10 Users NZ$385 +GST / monthly $38.5 per user - Pay by monthly credit card debit Premium Group Membership 20 Users NZ$660 +GST / monthly $33 per user - Pay by monthly credit card debit Premium Group Membership 50 Users NZ$1375 +GST / monthly $27.5 per user - Pay by monthly credit card debit Premium Group Membership 100 Users NZ$2100 +GST / monthly $21 per user - Pay by monthly credit card debit Yearly Premium Online Subscription + NBR Marketplace NZ$999.00 / yearly Already have an account? Login
The Spinoff
7 days ago
- Business
- The Spinoff
Why is Trade Me buying into Stuff? Explaining the stakes of an era-defining media deal
Two decades ago, when news organisations were global business titans able to buy fast-growing tech businesses, Stuff acquired Trade Me. This week's transaction flips the script. Yesterday was a landmark day in the history of New Zealand's news media, with each of our largest news publishers undergoing major shakeups in ownership, governance or both. Stuff Digital, the most popular free-to-access news site in the country, has a new co-owner, with auction marketplace Trade Me taking a 50% stake in the business. The timing of the announcement served to cast a lengthy shadow over a set piece that occurred a few hours later, at the headquarters of NZME, owners of the largest print newspaper and paywalled news audience in the NZ Herald. The company's annual shareholder meeting saw its chair resign, having adroitly dealt with an attempted coup and graciously fallen on her sword. She has been replaced by a former senior minister in the National Party, Steven Joyce, after a lengthy campaign from Jim Grenon, a wealthy Canadian now resident in New Zealand. The latter is now a major shareholder, who decried the business's performance, but also what he perceived as the quality and balance of its journalism. Stuff and Trade Me – star-crossed lovers and a tale of tech and news It's the deal between Stuff and Trade Me that has rightly attracted the most attention. Stuff has a tortured ownership history, resulting from the steady accumulation of dozens of newspaper titles, and the early and prescient launch of a unified national news brand under the name Stuff more than 20 years ago. At the time, it was owned by Fairfax Media, later Nine, out of Australia. It has intimate history with Trade Me, having itself bought the auctions platform in 2006 for a reported $750m. It was an adroit move from the news publisher, as news was still a vast and extremely profitable business at the time, but the challenge the internet would present to its business model was already becoming clear. In particular, classified advertisements, the small individual ads at the end of the paper known as 'rivers of gold' in the business due to the profits they delivered, were under brutal attack from the likes of Trade Me, which had successfully replicated what Ebay had accomplished in the US and Australia. By purchasing the business it had reaggregated what the internet had disaggregated. Unfortunately Fairfax was struggling with a debt load of its own, ultimately carving Trade Me off in a separate listing, and eventually exiting the business entirely in 2012. While it earned a healthy profit on those shares, the subsequent fates of both businesses tell an instructive story about the future of technology-driven businesses and digital news media – of classifieds, and the news they once subsidised, essentially. The values continued to diverge at pace. Trade Me was taken over and delisted by Apax, a private equity firm, in 2019 for around $2.5bn, while Nine panic-sold all its New Zealand assets to then NZ CEO Sinead Boucher for a nominal $1 in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, five years on from that fateful transaction, Boucher has completed one of the most intriguing and provocative deals in recent media history. Stuff last year split into two distinct businesses in a clear preparation for a transaction of this nature, despite their denials. One is called Mastheads, encompassing its paywalled sites and print newspapers (like The Post and The Press), the other called Stuff Digital, comprising its free-to-access digital sites (mostly Stuff). By selling 50% of Stuff Digital to Trade Me, long-rumoured and first reported by the NZ Herald's Shayne Currie in March, it completes an astonishing 20-year turnaround, from news organisations as global business titans able to buy fast-growing technology businesses, to a moment when those same news organisations are so challenged in terms of their financial value that they can be bought by those same tech businesses simply to test a theory. Why would the classifieds buy a news organisation? In many ways this runs counter to business logic. The whole idea of breaking the classifieds away from the newspaper was that the skills and capital needed to create a tech marketplace business were very different from those needed to run a print newspaper, and the expense of journalism was unnecessary and onerous when internet audiences could access what they needed to buy and sell without the expense of buying an issue of a newspaper. However, we are now operating in a different era. Trade Me is now a private company, so not required to release public data or financials. However, it has faced increasing competition in recent years, with NZME's property portal OneRoof gaining ground on Trade Me Property, while Facebook Marketplace, with its free listings, has chewed into its secondhand goods and vehicles markets. (It's instructive that Nine is currently assessing a giant bid for its property portal, Domain, while Bowen Pan, the New Zealander behind Facebook Marketplace, just yesterday joined the NZME board). Yesterday's press release contained only fairly glib statements from Boucher and Anders Skoe, Trade Me's chief executive, with the only concrete announcement being a rebrand of Stuff's fairly anaemic property section, Homed, to Trade Me Property. The potential synergies, however, are obvious and tantalising. Trade Me has what is likely the best and most powerful database of New Zealanders and their spending habits outside of Google's parent company Alphabet and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. It is also a very mature business now, with a limit to plausible growth aspirations under its own steam. If it were able to thread what it knows of its users through Stuff, Trade Me should be able to markedly increase the value of Stuff to all advertisers – including, but not limited to, its own sellers – while also diverting some of Stuff's vast audience (which represents over half of all New Zealanders in any given month) toward the myriad verticals on its platform. Will it work? It's a very challenging idea, and one that runs counter to some firmly laid assumptions of the internet. It's telling that both Nine, with its separate ASX listing for Domain, and NZME, which is testing doing the same for OneRoof, are moving in the opposite direction. And yet it is also a thesis worth testing, especially given that Trade Me likely paid very little for its share of Stuff Digital (terms have not been disclosed), particularly compared to the relative historic value of each business. That gets at the almost existential question underlying the transaction. Stuff is a journalism business, one that still employs many of the industry's best and brightest. Will its new part owners have the stomach to publish bold, challenging public interest journalism? Or will the incentives ultimately gravitationally pull it towards publishing quirky real estate stories, rave reviews of new EVs and explainers about the environmental benefits of buying used furniture? The answer to these questions will become clearer in the months and years to come. But it also promises to test a different paradox: news still commands vast attention online, yet perennially struggles to monetise that attention. This deal is testing the thesis that you can turn the vast audiences news generates into something far more valuable through a more intimate commercial relationship than display advertising. It's a provocative idea, one with many opportunities to fail, from culture to costs. But if they're right, it could open up a whole new operating model for news. One with a curious resemblance to the old one.
National Business Review
7 days ago
- Business
- National Business Review
Takeovers Panel NZME process a ‘disservice' to NZ, Grenon says
The Takeovers Panel's enquiry into whether certain acquisitions of NZME shares by Jim Grenon were in compliance with the Takeovers Code was 'completely unnecessary and a disservice to New Zealand,' the newly appointed NZME director says. Grenon's appointment to the board of the listed media
RNZ News
03-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
NZME board shake-up: 'An opportunity to debate editorial policy'
New NZME chair Steven Joyce says the refreshed board of directors will bring "fresh eyes" to editorial operations. File photo. Photo: Screenshot / Composite RNZ The annual meeting of media company NZME has rubber stamped a compromise deal allowing an activist shareholder onto its board But a former National government minister has also been appointed as its chair, with the existing board kept largely intact. Auckland-based Canadian businessman Jim Grenon bought a stake in the company and launched a bid at the start of the year to replace the current board with himself and three associates. But he ended up accepting a truce in which he alone got a seat, and Steven Joyce took over as chair. Grenon told the meeting that his move to shake up the company was audacious. "It seemed to me that things were drifting downhill, from my perspective in any event and these are often subjective, particularly on the editorial front, and I thought maybe I can sort of jump start something here and I'm very, very delighted with the way things worked out." Grenon gained 83 percent shareholder support with about 14 percent voting no. Joyce was voted in with more than 93 percent support. Shareholders concentrated their sometimes rambling questions on Joyce and Grenon, including inquiries about a proposed editorial advisory board that would have oversight on the group's news operations, which include the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB. Joyce said the refreshed board of directors would bring "fresh eyes" to editorial operations, but would not interfere on individual items, and editorial boards were not uncommon overseas. "I wouldn't fear it. It's an opportunity to debate editorial policy, an opportunity to support the development of editorial policy." Grenon said an editorial board would allow them to look over the shoulders of staff and assess them against a set of guidelines. "If they aren't meeting the guidelines then we can sort of nudge in the right direction," he told the meeting. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Newsroom
20-05-2025
- Business
- Newsroom
NZME agitator wants Herald's ‘political leaning' measured, maybe by AI
Comment: The Canadian-NZ investor who tried but failed to take board control of media firm NZME still believes its New Zealand Herald needs to 'measure its articles for political leaning' and suggests artificial intelligence can help. Jim Grenon, who previously formed the right-leaning Centrist site and newsletter, will likely win just his own seat on the NZME board when shareholders vote in a fortnight, rather than the chair plus three others he had sought. Instead, his board agitation will see former National Cabinet Minister Steven Joyce supported to become a director and take the chair, with three incumbent directors surviving and a new digital expert to be appointed. But Grenon, who outlined his financial and editorial concerns about the Herald in two letters to the board in March and April, is clearly not letting his focus on the paper's journalism fade as he prepares to join that board. In information posted to the NZX website on Friday for shareholders before the meeting he outlines his business background in Canada, acknowledges he might not 'on the surface … have a lot of directly relevant experience that will be helpful for NZME' and then returns to his editorial standards theme. He said his involvement with the Centrist – which platforms fringe and alternative content on climate change, social and gender issues and the Treaty of Waitangi – had exposed him in detail to the Herald's journalism. 'One of the things Centrist does is carefully follow what the other NZ news organisations are doing so I have had a thorough immersion into the journalism produced by NZME,' Grenon tells shareholders. 'I believe it is important for the Herald to be a broad church. To ensure it is on course it needs to be able to measure its articles for political leaning, overall. This is now much easier with AI. The same can be said about measuring the quality of the journalism.' Grenon has been critical of the Herald and Stuff as long ago as during the pandemic, and the Centrist has said publicly that the Herald's journalism problems were among the reasons for the site/newsletter's launch. 'The NZ Herald also seems to sometimes accept, without questioning, what we see as blatantly misleading government narrative. This includes 3 Waters and the IRD high net worth project. The Herald, BusinessDesk and other major media sources in New Zealand, inspired us to launch NE and the Centrist.' The right-tinged Free Speech Union has also publicly declared it first sparked Grenon's interest in NZME by alerting him to its refusals to publish certain political advocacy advertisements. Quite how Grenon would expect the Herald newsroom or the creation of an editorial advisory board that he promoted in his campaign to measure 'political leaning' in its journalism is unclear. What is also unclear is whether he would expect the Herald to make that measurement of leaning public to readers and customers. In the early weeks of his attempt to turn his 9.97 percent holding in NZME into sweeping aside the existing board, taking the chair and appointing his own nominees, Grenon told NZME he would not be a standard chair. 'I do not propose to act as an average, passive board chair. I propose to be very active at the management level, leading a board and team that will delve into the operational details so as to be able to challenge management. Some other board members may also assist with the technical work. This approach to governance is the only realistic way to ensure NZME gets a fresh set of eyes questioning every aspect of operational effectiveness and shareholder value creation.' Steven Joyce is chair in waiting for NZME. Photo: Lynn Grieveson As a lone director he will now need to make that case to his colleagues around the board table. His previous letters to the board – including one advising directors to forget a futile defence against his raid – listed the company's poor financial performance, insufficient transparency, bloated management and staffing costs and a need for better journalism. One letter said Grenon expected NZME staff to get with the programme once he took over: 'We expect to find significant cost reduction in the high-cost employees and executive ranks. It is easy to understand why existing management has been resistant in this area. We also hope to find many in the existing NZME staff that can work and thrive in the new paradigm, which will provide opportunities for some to advance.' Whether he will be permitted by Joyce and the board to be actively involved in changing the executive ranks and spending can only emerge once the shareholders have had their say on June 3. Grenon has lived in New Zealand for 12 years. He still owns and works with TOM Capital, a private equity business based in Calgary, Canada, that has had financial success investing in energy and manufacturing firms. He lists his board experience at various listed firms over 25 years. His most recent note to shareholders says he and his TOM Capital colleagues have been poring over NZME's financial affairs for a year. 'I think it is noteworthy that, many times in the past I have acquired significant investments based only on publicly available knowledge but they have almost always worked very well once I was in a position on the inside. These calculated risks, based on some, but incomplete, knowledge and experience, are part of private equity investing.' A Grenon associate and at one stage nominee for the NZME board, lawyer and blogger Philip Crump, is set to join the new editorial advisory board at NZME, perhaps as chair. Crump worked within NZME for nine months establishing the ZB Plus centre-right website which was abandoned. He became a favourite of the coalition Government, winning appointments to the board of NZ on Air (the broadcasting and digital content funding agency) and the Waitangi Tribunal. Once appointed to the NZME editorial advisory board, Crump's position on NZ on Air's board would have to be under examination for any appearances of conflict of interest. Stuff up again The latest online audience numbers are out, with Stuff again dominant. Stuff's online ad after winning 11 Voyager Media Awards, including best digital platform. The winner for the second year in a row of best digital news platform at the Voyager Media Awards, Stuff has 2.3 million unique readers in the Nielsen online ratings for April. That is a substantial 417,000 ahead of the nzherald site on just under 1.9m, with RNZ on 1.5m and 1News now a distant fourth on 743,000. RNZ's continued strength follows the demise last July of the Newshub website. Nielsen's April release appears more straightforward than its issuing, then retraction, of March figures after concern over errors. Amended March figures now show Stuff (initially listed as having 2.34m unique readers) was actually 2.2m, and nzherald (initially set at 1.82m) was revised up to 1.89m. Using the latest figures for March, Stuff lifted its audience by 126,000 in April and nzherald was up 9000.
