Fairfax makes Antony Catalano CEO of real estate website Domain
Catalano
Metro Media Publishing boss Antony Catalano has been appointed by Fairfax Media as CEO of its real estate classifieds business Domain.
Catalano was most recently the chief executive and publisher of Metro Media Publishing (MMP), which he founded after he was made redundant from Fairfax, and then launched The Weekly Review to rival Fairfax’s Melbourne Weekly.
After the MMP publication started poaching revenues of Fairfax Community Newspapers, Fairfax Media bought a 50 per cent stake in MMP for $35m, with the Melbourne-based publishing company MMP then also taking responsibility for sales of Domain products in Melbourne.
…Fairfax. Not even their most creative writers could make this shit up.
So Fairfax has a joint venture investor running its largest metro business? Next thing you know they’ll be investing in pubs and pokies!
Is this what’s known as a live cat bounce?
Work for Fairfax for nearly two decades, earn a nice little retrenchment payout, start a competitive business, sell back to previous employer for a very profitable return, and then get re-hired into (almost) your old role….
Cat, you’re a genius!!!
If you were write a novel about a revered business’ decline, no one would believe it if based on recent Fairfax misadventures.
Good luck to Catalano. He’d do a much better job of running Fairfax than Heywood & Co. He seems to understand that elusive principle: making money and growth are good things (even if they do boost carbon emissions)
I think we have the new CEO in waiting people.
“We have exposure to more than $300 million of real estate-related revenue, and we have the brand,”
There’s another brand more suited to real estate than domain called location.com.au where the increased roi for every visitor and marketing campaign would fill a huge part of the puzzle to catching realestate.com.au.
Because the word “domain” on a scale of 1 – 10 is about a 5 in regards to relating it to property compared with the word “location”. For example, who automatically thinks the word “domain” in relation to property (without having been marketed the name) compared to the word “location” which is at the heart of every property decision.