The Oz’s John Durie says APN capital raising dead – Hunt and Chenoweth no option but to resign

Tough words from The Australian’s veteran business commentator John Durie this afternoon. The bottom line in the APN News & Media battle is as things stand, the equity

raising is dead. “Shareholders own the company, not the chief executive Brett Chenoweth and chairman Peter Hunt, who now have no choice but to resign. ”

Durie then dishes out a basic maths lesson: Major shareholders Independent News & Media and Allan Gray account for 51 per cent of the share register and reject the need for a highly dilutionary capital raising.

Says Durie, “It is a corporate governance test case with the usual emotion, which comes with the battle for a media property. Threats from the Hunt and Chenoweth side of the battle that they can’t proceed and certainly can’t sign the accounts this week have left them with no choice but to resign. You simply can’t run a public company by blackmail.

“Whether shareholders will be better off in the long term remains to be seen.”