Herald’s editor is reopening nominations to the meeting room directors in an attempt to prevent the aggressive offer of Jim Grenon’s acquisition, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s bulletin extract.
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Nzme attacks
After weeks of impulse, Jim Grenon’s attempt in NZME reached resistance. The council rushed, postponing its annual shareholder meeting up to five weeks until the beginning of June and reopening the appointment process to the directors. In a letter to shareholdersThe board said it has received new information from Grenon’s camp over the weekend – including an up -to -date structure of the proposed board – which justified closer scrutiny. Herald’s Shayne Currie (Paywalled Prayed) Note that the board letter has raised concerns about all Grenon proposals, “including independence, experience, continuity and gender diversity.” The council also expressed the concern that Grenon could obtain editorial influence on its stable of brands and titles, especially NZ Herald.
Grenon, a New Zealand -based billionaire, bought a 9.3% stake in NZME in March through his company JTG 4 and immediately launched his campaign to obtain control of the company’s board. He insists on his interest in the editorial direction is minimal, but Also said He wants to see an “emphasis on factual accuracy, less selling the writer’s opinion and attractive to a broader political spectrum.”
Troy Bowker enters the fight
The latest point of inflammation in the impasse of NZME BoARDRODFF is the proposal of board of businessman Troy Bowker. In his letter to the NZME council, Grenon suggested that Bowker replace one of his previous counsel nominees; As part of his answer, the board highlighted a 2023 text text sent to BusinessDesk founding editor Pattrick Smellie: “With signature services that claim to be a business news site, I don’t want to read any story that irritates me.” Board President Barbara Chapman said she suggested that Bowker “was against attracting a wide range of perspectives,” adding: “We worry what this can do to keep a large audience and its impact on the team and revenue.”
Bowker, whose Caniwi capital company holds just over 3.5% of NZME shares, rejected the framing as a personal attack and said the quote was “chosen by cherry”, Reports Shayne “Media Insider” Curriethat was all this story. A self-described champion of freedom of expression, Bowker argues that he was just pressing for BusinessDesk to publish “good quality business news” instead of “social comments with a leftist political bias.” This is not the first time Bowker has been in hot water about the comments that some consider poorly advised. In 2021, he saw himself at the center of a storm He accused Sir Ian Taylor “Sugar the left agenda that loved the Maori.”
Who is Jim Grenon?
Jim Grenon, rich, relentless and deeply private, cuts an unusual figure in the corporate scenario of New Zealand. TIM MURPHY DA WRITING WRITS that the investor is “like a dog with a bone” in business and disputes. Over the course of two decades, Grenon has been involved in complex and sometimes extraordinary fiscal battles with the Canadian authorities, including one that emerged from a legal rate deduction of $ 11,800 and entered a 14 -year saga. In another case, the courts found that he had been involved in “abusive” fiscal dropout using minors as nominal investors. In a response published in HeraldGrenon says that in Canada: “Fiscal dropout is allowed, it is just an ‘abusive’ fiscal dropout that allows the court to use grip [general anti-avoidance rule]… It’s nothing like a label as you think. Lawyers representing Granon companies are now trying to appeal to Canada’s Supreme Court.
“People who have been involved with Grenon over the years have no doubt that he is a firm, quite uncompromising and right -wing social worldview,” Murphy writes. The fear among many who work in NZME – and among their audience – is that Grenon’s beliefs are significantly more extreme than this description would suggest. How Duncan Greive writes on spinoffGrenon’s previous media start-ups and Centrist and NZNE “are places of aggregation with a handful of original content. They are widely concerned about some minor transmittance problems, treaty coverage and efficacy and vaccine injuries.”
Centrist decoding
In a deep dive into the center content, The Charlie Mitchell of the Press (Paywalled) notes that the websites of which he adds include the time times funded by Pro-China and Falun Gong; Right Blog Zerohedge; and a website managed by Paul Joseph Watson, a protected conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. “The Centrist’s right perspective is not inherently problematic,” writes Mitchell. “The potential concern is how it can be perceived how to refuel right -wing visualizations as neutral (or ‘centrist’), while sometimes ignored standard journalistic practices that inform readers and guarantee responsibility.”
While Grenon has established the centrist, he has not been a director or shareholder since August 2023. He has ruled out any comparison between the centrist and his future plans to NZME as “a leap”, describing them as two very distinct publications with different mandates.
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