Fairfax article this morning has several interesting details:
Mr Gordon, who is currently at his home in Bermuda, was not available for comment.
The fact he’s retreated to his lair is a good sign I suppose.
Mr Korda said an application was lodged with FIRB on August 28, and he said it is usually a one-month process.
So within a week, we should know the result of the Foreign Investment Review Board’s process.
Clever gif:
On assurances from Murdoch/Gordon that no jobs would be lost, I would have asked: for how long? They couldn’t say forever, and I doubt they would have given a specific time frame. The best they could have said was something vague like “the foreseeable future”, which would have amounted to sackings whenever they liked.
I assume that the money owed to CBS was for content, which was just bonus money. They would have made the same shows and paid the same for them, so any they sell overseas is free money. I don’t think they’ve actually lost money on Ten’s debt for their content.
I think the no redundancy promise was in the immediate transfer of ownserhsil. Then all they would’ve done is “we are cost cutting and closing down newsrooms and outsourcing news to sky and closing down studios and production to be done out of fox headquarters”
I can only imagine what sort of meetings are going on at WIN HQ right now.
FOX is the second largest creditor. So if CBS was excluded it would’ve been FOX and the employees voting, most likely resulting in a tie… where KordaMentha would have the casting vote - and they most likely would’ve chosen CBS (as that was their recommendation.)
My understanding was that the employees were the second largest voting block once combined.
So Fox was third behind CBS and the staff bloc.
I think you’ve missed my point/thought: If the Gordon/Murdoch’s argument that CBS shouldn’t have been allowed to vote because they were a creditor seeking to take over, the same reasoning should’ve also excluded Fox/Murdoch & Gordon.
Is that correct though? It technically isn’t a Fox bid… which I think is the loop hole they were going to try and exploit.
Hence the bid from Illyria and Burkitu … but really then cbs could argue that Murdoch is executve chairman of news corp and his private holding company has links to fox through news. All very confusing but I’m guess the legality of KordaMentha will hold up it seems.
FOX were the second largest in value. The staff were the largest number of creditors. Technically they are on ‘opposite sides’ of the voting. The bidder has to secure the majority of the numbers and the value. If that’s a tie, the administrator has the casting vote (and of course they’d go for the bidder they recommended.)
That’s why it was imperative for CBS’ voting power (their debt owed by TEN) to be reduced well below FOX’s.
Oh no, sorry… I must not have expressed myself well… that is absolutely right, and it is just another in the long list of dodgy decisions they made during this whole process.
BUT, FOX - the creditor - are separate to Murdoch & Gordon the bidders. (Even though it’s all in the family.)
And that’s where I have nothing but praise for Mark and his team for seeing through it all and steering the ship.
I get that there are separate companies which have shared owners (& directors, etc.), but if that’s all required to get around such restrictions CBS could’ve done the same:
A CBS subsidiary is purchasing Ten , and that subsidiary company could easily be (or could’ve been arranged to be) a different subsidiary company than the Ten creditor.
My hope is that the law/courts can take such corporate structural gymnastics into account (see through them) as far as arguments on who benefits from what offer being accepted and so theoretically should/shouldn’t have a vote.
I reckon that’s why you saw what you saw on Monday with such a decisive and instant dismissal of the case.
I’ve read the the staff debt was $56m and that 20 C Fox was $200m
According to reports, excluding CBS, the balance of the creditors were still in favour of the CBS deal.
So even Fox supported CBS?
potential staff debt was $16m - that’s the amount owed to staff if the company was liquidated and all staff sacked.
FOX did not support the deal… everyone else, apparently, did.
There’s an AFR story published today which confirms what’s already been said about the reasons why Ten’s employee’s rejected the bid by Murdoch and Gordon:
Network Ten Holdings’ employees unanimously rejected Bruce Gordon and Lachlan Murdoch’s bid for the television network because they feared for their jobs, didn’t trust the two media moguls and wanted more media-ownership diversity.
Well-placed company sources said assurances by Mr Gordon and Mr Murdoch that there would be no further job cuts were not believed by staff, who partially blamed the son of famed media tycoon Rupert Murdoch for not halting the network’s long-term decline and felt Mr Gordon had not supported the vulnerable network even though he was its biggest shareholder.
Staff would have even preferred to have been sold to a private equity firm than join the Murdoch global media empire, a source said.
The administrators of Ten Network Holdings are back in the NSW Supreme Court tomorrow morning for a directions hearing. It appears to be the next step in the legal process of getting Ten out of administration. There are no other parties listed for the hearing.
I notice news.com.au have an article regarding CBS killing off the main character in one of their sitcoms (Kevin Can Wait, which I didn’t even realised aired here on Ch9) and predictably are outraged… I can see this becoming a regular occurrence now 
I wonder what happened to Murdoch, Gordon and FOX wanting to be notified of the court hearing so they could oppose.