John Fairfax Holdings
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John Fairfax Holdings Limited (ABN 15 008 663 161) is an Australian Public Company operating in the media industry, working predominantly with newspapers. It publishes two of Australia's most well-known newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Age. It was founded by the Fairfax family but they lost control of the company on December 11, 1990.
In Australia the company also owns The Sun-Herald, a Sunday newspaper, in Sydney, The Illawarra Mercury in Wollongong, The Newcastle Herald in Newcastle and The Standard in Warrnambool. On May 4, 2006, it was announced that it would purchase the The Border Mail newspaper in Albury-Wodonga for $162 million.
In New Zealand, its subsidiary Fairfax New Zealand Limited owns a stable of papers formerly owned by Independent Newspapers Limited (INL), including The Dominion Post in Wellington, The Press in Christchurch and The Sunday Star-Times in Auckland.
The Fairfax Community Newspapers and Text Media subsidiaries publish community newspapers throughout Melbourne and Sydney. Additionally, a number of community newspapers are produced throughout NZ by Fairfax New Zealand.
The company also owns a stable of Australian business publications, including the daily business newspaper The Australian Financial Review, and the magazines BRW, BOSS, Shares, Personal Investor, Asset and MIS.
The company owns a profitable Australian online subsidiary, Fairfax Digital which was once known as the F2 Network. The company's websites include its subject focused:
- News: [Newsbreak]
- Employment: [My Career]
- Free Classifieds and Forums: [Cracker.com.au]
- Australian Holiday Accommodation: [Stayz.com.au]
- Cars: [Drive]
- Property: [Domain]
- Personals: [RSVP]
- Finance: [Trading Room]
- Superannuation and Managed Funds: [Managed Funds at Direct Access]
- Personal Investment: [Money Manager]
- Death Notices: [SMH Death Notices]
- Australian Rules Football: [Realfooty]
- Rugby Union: [Rugbyheaven]
- Australian Towns: [Walkabout]
All these sites are in the top two of their fields. The Age and SMH websites also have a couple of jointly produced sections that differ only in their branding. However, they are not independent sites - they don't even have their own domain name.
Note that both The Age and SMH produce a limited amount of video content, which is only available online.
In NZ, Fairfax's websites form the stuff portal. Sites include:
- News: [stuff]
- Employment: [jobstuff]
- Property: [propertystuff]
- Personals: [personalstuff]
- Food: [Cuisine]
- Shopping: [stuff on sale]
In February 2004, a proposal was put to the board of Telstra to buy John Fairfax Holdings. This proposal was not supported by the board.
In July 2005, Fairfax acquired the RSVP dating site for A$38M.
In August 2005, Fairfax's general classifieds site created in March 2004, [Cracker.com.au] consistently exceeded 500,000 Unique Visitors a month.
In December 2005, Fairfax acquired [Stayz.com.au] for A$12M.
In August 2005, Fairfax ended its 16 month search for a new Chief Executive Officer with David Kirk, a former Rugby Union World Cup winning captain of the New Zealand All Blacks being appointed to replace departing CEO Fred Hilmer. David Kirk gets the nod ahead of Fairfax COO Brian Evans (former head of Fairfax New Zealand) and Doug Flynn, who took the top job at UK Pest control company Rentokil after negotiations with Fairfax broke off.
In March 2006, Fairfax acquired New Zealand auction website [Trademe.co.nz] for NZ$700M.
External links
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