Various pieces in The Australian and other newspapers today and...

Various pieces in The Australian and other newspapers today and yesterday, poorly sourced as always, suggest that Fairfax Media is proposing to merge its metropolitan mastheads with NEC (while also selling off some or all of its real estate listing arm the Domain Group). If any of this reported plan to merge the mastheads is true, it would be necessary to secure the blessing of Nine (and Fairfax) shareholders in order to proceed (according to the article). Not sure whether anyone would want a stake in the mastheads in question (The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Australian Financial Review), but as one of the articles notes:

With a Domain restructure set to deprive the Fairfax group of the bulk of its revenue, the publisher will accelerate plans to turn the lower-revenue metropolitan newspaper business into a much lower-cost unit. For Nine, this could make the newspapers a more attractive asset.

Perhaps there’s some upside for NEC in all of this (very) longer term, depending on the terms of any deal.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...t/news-story/0dc70e817964b52d0afdca6e7204b630

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...e/news-story/b11bc8dd52b469b424b4843f40196531