Fairfax family ‘curse’ lifted as name vanishes
THERE will be few tears from surviving Fairfaxs when the family’s name is pulled down from the building facades of newspaper companies that have carried it for 177 years, writes Annette Sharp.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THERE will be few tears from surviving Fairfaxs when the family’s name is pulled down from the building facades of newspaper companies that have carried it for 177 years.
The greatest sadness is expected to be felt far away in Annapolis, an hour’s drive east of Washington, US, where 57-year-old Warwick Fairfax, the last member of the family to sit, briefly, at the helm, while steering the ship into a disastrous privatisation attempt in 1987, was heard yesterday to lament: “Change is inevitable. It doesn’t mean you have to like it.”
For others in the large and greatly divided clan, news that Fairfax Media may soon be rebranded “Nine” has brought the sort of relief that might be associated with the lifting of an ancient curse.
Indeed for a time it did look, despite their success, as though the Fairfaxs may have been cursed.
Two of dynasty founder John Fairfax’s four children were killed in tragic falls involving horses — including only daughter Emily who died while trying to save her father after he fell from a carriage. He survived.
The third generation battled disease, some succumbing to typhoid and tetanus and others to unidentified illness while still relatively young.
Spinsterism too was rampant among the women of that generation, although today this might be called “progressive”.
The great peer of the fourth generation, Sir Warwick, was careless with wives and found himself sunk in scandal, while generations five and six will, rightly or wrongly, be forever associated with the collapse of the company and business failure.
It has been decades since there was much harmony in the expanded Fairfax clan — the exception possibly being among the children of fourth generation scion Vincent Fairfax.
His sons, John Brehmer and Timothy, were the last Fairfax siblings to take a major interest in the company in 2007 when they sold their media company, Rural Press, into Fairfax in what was reported as a $2.8 billion cash and scrip deal.
By the time they sold out again in 2011 — an event recorded by finance writers as the final retreat of the Fairfax family from the company bearing its name — the value of Fairfax shares had plummeted from $4.72 to 92.5c and much of the investment had been written off.
Any hopes of a Fairfax heir reforging the sword were lost forever.
In 2010, John Brehmer’s son Nicholas Fairfax told a Fairfax publication his third cousin Warwick’s bid for the business had been painful for his branch of the family.
“I remember it as a very vivid and intense time,” said Nicholas, who was 15 when Warwick pushed his older relatives off the Fairfax board. “It was a particularly difficult period for my grandfather because it was also his entitlement and he greatly valued The Sydney Morning Herald’s place in society. He was close to his 80s then and it really affected his health.”
A former Fairfax board member, Nicholas went on to say he had learned to be “unsentimental” in business.
“There’s no doubt that many people become instantly more interested in meeting you when you have Fairfax as a last name. Yet it can also mean having to work harder to prove yourself … I’ve had points in my career where I had to confront a preconceived image of having been born with a silver spoon.’’
The entrepreneurial spirit of British immigrant printer John Fairfax may have been a financial boon to seven-and-counting generations of his clan, but for those living to see the decline of the Fairfax business during the past four decades there has been ample pain.
The family has had great wealth but been marred by resentment, bitterness and estrangement.
While the death of Lady Mary Fairfax, Sir Warwick’s third wife and the mother of Warwick Jr, brought closure for some last September, for others that closure comes finally now with news the Fairfax family name will soon slip from the stock exchange floor and into corporate memory.