Nine boss Hugh Marks sells 700,000 shares for tax reasons

Hugh Marks has offloaded $1.4m worth of shares in the media company for ‘personal’ tax reasons.

Nine CEO Hugh Marks Picture: AAP

Nine Entertainment boss Hugh Marks has sold $1.4 million worth of shares in the media company for “personal tax” reasons.

The sale of 700,000 shares comes after Nine, and Mr Marks, last week came under fire for hosting a Liberal Party fundraising event.

The company said the sale of the shares between September 2-6 was to “satisfy personal tax obligations arising from previous share issues”.

Inclusive of shares recently issued under Nine's incentive plans, Mr Marks owns 2.2 million shares in the company directly, plus 282,280 indirectly.

He also has 1.5m performance rights available, subject to meeting specific vesting conditions, Nine said in a statement to the ASX.

The disclosure comes a week after Mr Marks hosted a $10,000-a-head political fundraiser on the set of Nine's breakfast show Today, which drew the wrath of its newspaper journalists at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review.

The newspaper journalists, which Nine inherited from its $4 billion merger with Fairfax Media in December, questioned the chief executive's decision to host the event at its Willoughby headquarters in Sydney.

Mr Marks has since admitted that hosting the political fundraiser was a "mistake", telling James Chessell, group executive editor of the SMH, The Age and The Brisbane Times, that it “could have been handled better”.