Pearson Keen To Buy Australian Paper

Pearson Plc's London-based Financial Times newspaper was interested in acquiring the Australian Financial Review daily published by John Fairfax Holdings Ltd, Financial Times chairman David Bell said.

The Pearson group is serious about the Australian Financial Review, he told the Business Sunday programme on Nine Network television.

We think it would go very well with the other financial newspapers that we have across the world, he said.

Speculation about a break-up of Fairfax has risen recently following a government review of media laws.

Bell said the chief executive of the Financial Times recently had discussions with a variety of people in Australia, including Prime Minister John Howards and Treasurer Peter Costello.

 

Those discussions are still continuing, he said.

He declined to speculate on what the Financial Review might be worth.

Asked if Pearson might be interested in Fairfax's Business Review Weekly (BRW) stable of magazines, Bell said: Yes, we might, if we could work that out in a satisfactory way.

There is widespread speculation that the government would allow media tycoon Kerry Packer to bid for Fairfax if agreed to sell one of the key Fairfax publications.

Fairfax publishes the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age broadsheet daily newspapers, as well as the Financial Review and BRW, among other magazine titles.

Packer, the owner of the Nine Network through his Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd, has a 15 per cent stake in Fairfax and has long expressed an interest in taking it over.

But under present media rules he cannot control a newspaper and a television station in the same market.

Packer is the second largest shareholder in Fairfax behind Brierley Investments Ltd of New Zealand, which has 20 per cent and which under foreign investment media rules cannot go beyond 25 per cent.

Brierley has said it is a long term investor in Fairfax.