Australia’s Real Estate Boom Has Wall Street Wooing a Newspaper Publisher -
By JACQUELINE WILLIAMSMAY 30, 2017
SYDNEY, Australia — Wall Street has started a bidding war for Fairfax Media, an
Australian company best known for the dowdy business of publishing newspapers.
You don’t pick up The Herald anymore on a Saturday to see what’s for sale.”
Australia’s two biggest cities — Sydney and Melbourne — are having an extended, how-long-can-it-last surge in property prices,
and for global investors, Fairfax’s Domain offers a piece of the action.
The bidding war also sets up another battle, between News Corporation, one of Australia’s biggest media companies,
and well-funded Wall Street investors bent on making money from Australians’ fascination with property prices.
That has raised concerns that the intense focus on a real estate market
that may or may not keep growing will put at risk Fairfax’s most visible assets: major newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne.
Sometimes castigated as corporate raiders, private equity firms use money from pension funds, wealthy investors
and other sources to buy a company, streamline it and resell it, often by listing it on a stock market.