Australian Media - Packer, Murdoch deal confirmed

Following up from my previous post on The Convergence of Media (Internet, Television, Press, Cinema, Outdoor), Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer have announced a $3.3 billion takeover of the media company, Consolidated Media Holdings. This would give each media baron a 50% stake.

The interesting thing not reported is the additional internet assets that come with this deal. It has been reported that Mr Murdoch would become the executive chairman of the new company. Lachlan Murdoch is poised to make a stunning return to the media industry in a $2 billion-plus deal to privatise James Packer's Consolidated Media Holdings.

Media Spy reports ...

The deal is worth $3.3 billion, made up of an offer of $4.06 in cash for each share, as well as a percentage of shares in the recruitment firm Seek, taking the total offer to $4.80.

CMH currently owns a 25% stake in Foxtel, the Nine Network and in ACP magazines. Other media assets include:

• Ticketek


• nineMSN


• carsales


• myHome


• skyNews

TechCrunch have also covered this story today.

Off Topic: My dad worked with Lachlan Murdoch for a couple of weeks at News Corp while he did his tour of duty around the business.

Google to acquire Motorola ?

I read an interesting post on the activities of Google in the mobile phone space.

Do you know about Android, open access, 700MHz and a gPhone?



Do you know that Google acquired Jaiku - something that Nokia was rumoured to be after. Google acquired the popular “activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones.” Google has made a number of acquisitions in the mobile and VoIP space.


Android is an Open Handset Alliance Project. The Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, is developing Android: the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. To help developers get started developing new applications, we're offering an early look at the Android Software Development Kit.

Archart made the comment:

Here’s the thesis: If Google is prepared to go as far as Android, why not go the next step and produce its own handsets? Not just a single ‘gPhone’ but entire portfolios of Android-enabled devices.

Nokia is a company that produces a range of handsets, a handset OS, a rich set of mobile applications and services. Why not Google ? Nokia has spent $10 billion trying to compete with Google in search, email, file sharing, advertising and mapping (e.g. Enpocket, Intellisync, Avvenu and NAVTEQ).

Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz discuss the availability of the SDK, that it will be open source in the future, and demo some applications.

Techcrunch have a great posted predicting what the next set of companies Google will acquire in 2008. Another interesting post about Google strategy is WEB 3.0 and Google.