Fairfax up on CEO rumours
The Age
Friday February 4, 2011
SHARES in Fairfax Media increased by 4.1 per cent yesterday, on speculation that its board will give its interim chief executive the permanent job as early as today.Following the resignation of Brian McCarthy in December, Fairfax, owner of The Age, installed non-executive director Greg Hywood as interim chief executive.It was intended to allow time to recruit a permanent replacement, but as soon as Mr Hywood joined the board in October he was considered by many to be a possible heir, given his resume includes stints as publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review.Shareholder activist Stephen Mayne asked him at the company's annual meeting if he might make a chief executive of the company some day. Mr Hywood replied: "I have a range of other directorships which I'm engaged in, and really at this stage I am quite happy to fulfil those."Mr McCarthy announced a restructure of the company intended to better meet the challenges of digital publishing. He left soon afterwards.Although the company would not confirm that the chief executive's job was even on the agenda of today's board meeting in Sydney, the shares rose yesterday by 5 to $1.40.The performance of other media shares was mixed: Southern Cross Media gained some of the ground it lost after announcing a takeover bid for the dominant metropolitan FM radio operator Austereo and News Corp rose 3.4 per cent after reporting a doubling in profit, while Macquarie Radio drifted down.
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