Prime target or media chicken?

Antony Catalano. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Seven West Media boss James Warburton is still to pick up the phone and call either Antony Catalano or his billionaire business partner Alex Waislitz.

The pair of Prime Media shareholders - who earlier in the year took regional publisher Australian Community Media off Nine boss Hugh Marks’s hands for $115m - could scupper Warburton’s Prime Media takeover, if they can rustle up a backer or two on the registry.

For now, the two sides are engaged in a game of media chicken.

Late on Thursday, Prime’s long-suppressed shares rose 2.5 per cent to close above 20c - far from giddy, but a two-month high nonetheless.

Clearly, somebody out there on the Prime share register thinks Warburton and the billionaire proprietor who installed him in the job in August, Kerry Stokes, are going to have to sweeten their bid.

In the Seven crew’s favour is a change of control provision in its affiliation agreement with Prime.

That means if someone else - say a billionaire-backed Catalano - proposed to take over Prime, its most important partner Seven could walk. Not bad leverage.

But as Margin Call understands the highly fluid situation, a rival takeover for the $73m outfit is now unlikely.

That’s despite such a potential transaction featuring in the business plan Catalano and Waislitz have shared over the last five months with everyone from Win billionaire Bruce Gordon (a fellow interesting Prime shareholder) to Prime chairman John Hartigan to Warburton’s predecessor Tim Worner.

We gather Stokes himself was familiar with the feline regional upstart’s interest.

But that was before Seven pounced first.

Now what?

It seems Prime may emerge under Seven’s ownership, but with a strategic agreement with the ACM duo and their 160-odd regional titles.

People in Stokes’s camp can see some logic in that arrangement. So can Catalano and Waislitz.

If only someone would pick up the phone.