Industry Super Holdings wants to offload The New Daily
Industry Super Holdings are looking to get out of the media business by selling off The New Daily, perhaps aware that past performance is no guarantee of future results.
A spokesperson for The New Daily confirmed the potential of a sale to the Sydney Morning Herald, blaming the situation on the loss of Meta payments under the news bargaining code.
“In light of the decision by Meta to cease payments for news from media companies, combined with other pressures in the industry, the board of The New Daily is undertaking a market scan to identify whether a sale would be in the best interest of the business,” the spokesperson said.
M&A advisory Grant Thornton is in charge of the sale process, and the SMH claims, via anonymous sources, that approaches have already been made to “several publishers as potential buyers.”
The New Daily launched in 2013 with an unorthodox ownership structure comprising of six super funds: AustralianSuper, HESTA, LUCRF, United Super, First Super, and Cbus.
By June 2016, umbrella group Industry Super Holdings became the sole owner of The New Daily, after the “commercial investment” — as its super owners insisted it was upon launch — became profitable in FY16, albeit by just $14,000.
The New Daily’s current editor is Neil Frankland.
Mumbrella has reached out to The New Daily’s SA publisher Solstice Media for further comment.
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New Daily is great. It’s also a ripe acquisition for Private Media.
Maybe if they put more ads on the page they would do better.
🙂
I unsubscribed from the New Daily the moment Michael Pascoe went down his ‘Keating-ish’ anti-American, pro-China path. If sold to the SMH, Pascoe would likely butt heads with Peter Hartcher, the el-supremo of anti-China commentary. Its unlikely to be a long marriage.