Waislitz chips in $30m for papers

Billionaire investor Alex Waislitz is stumping up almost $30 million of the $115m buyout of Nine Entertainment’s newspapers.

Investor Alex Waislitz is financing 25 per cent of the buyout of Nine’s regional newspapers.

Billionaire investor Alex Waislitz is stumping up almost $30 million of his own money to fund the $115m buyout of Nine Entertainment’s regional newspapers by media entrepreneur Antony Catalano, new documents reveal.

Mr Waislitz is financing 25 per cent of the deal via his private Thorney Investment Group, which he wholly owns, and his listed investment company Thorney Opportunities is contributing another 25 per cent, the latter revealed yesterday.

The other 50 per cent of the deal for the Australian Community Media group, which owns newspapers such as The Canberra Times, The Newcastle Herald and The Illawarra Mercury, is being funded by Mr Catalano, the former chief executive of online real estate classifieds group Domain.

Mr Catalano, backed by Mr Waislitz, bought ACM from Nine in April, completing the deal in time for the start of new financial year. The duo paid $115m for the business, plus Nine will receive $10m in advertising over three years.

“While it is very early days, we are very excited about the opportunities presented by TOP’s participation in the acquisition of ACM,” Mr Waislitz told Thorney Opportunities (TOP) investors.

“We believe the combination of Thorney’s investment management expertise and Antony Catalano’s proven ability to create value from media assets will result in considerable upside for TOP investors over time.”

Thorney Opportunities is an LIC with an activist bent, often taking stakes in companies in an effort to agitate for board, management and strategic changes and is backed by shareholders such as billionaire Marc Besen and Tasmania’s richest person, Dale Elphinstone.

It has a diverse range of ASX-listed share investments, including infrastructure and mining services-focused stocks such as Decmil, Southern Cross Engineering and MMA Offshore.

Those stocks have performed strongly for Mr Waislitz this year, as has another holding in Money3 which is up about 30 per cent since January 1.

Thorney Opportunities also once housed a significant portion of Mr Waislitz’s investment in Fairfax Media, which was acquired by Nine in a $4 billion deal last year.

At the time he said he would not vote his shares in favour of the deal, arguing Fairfax shareholders were missing out on value from the sale of some assets.

Mr Catalano then launched an 11th-hour bid in the Federal Court to delay the Nine deal, arguing for a plan of asset sales and strategic repositioning around Fairfax’s real estate assets.

But the merger went ahead and Mr Catalano waited until April to snap up more than 160 regional mastheads when Nine put ACM up for sale, with Mr Waislitz emerging as his partner in the deal.

The billionaire’s fortune is estimated at $1.46bn on The List — Australia’s Richest 250, published by The Australian.