Fairfax reveals $448m fall in value of mastheads

Tim Burrowes

February 23, 2009 10:04

Fairfax Media – the owner of titles such as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – today said it had wiped nearly half a billion dollars off the estimated value of its mastheads, based on the company’s weakened future profit prospects.

The revelation came in the company’s announcement of its results for the six months to the end of 2008.

It said it was cutting $447.5m from the value of the company’s mastheads, licences and goodwill. It said that it was also factoring into its numbers redundancy and restructuring costs of $62.4m.

The one-off items led it to declare a loss, before interest and tax, of $227.8m, compared to a profit of $352.8 in the same period a year before.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.