INL falls just short of a century

INL shareholders yesterday voted to consign the company to the annals of New Zealand publishing history - 99 years after the first newspaper rolled off the press in Wellington.

The vote, at a special meeting in Auckland, was a formality, with 99.98 per cent in favour of the scheme of arrangement to merge the company with Sky Network Television.

Sky's special meeting yesterday was 99.94 per cent in favour.

The chairmen of the two meetings - INL director John Hunn and Sky chairman Peter Macourt - parried investment analyst Brian Gaynor's criticism of "very poor" disclosure in the information memorandum for the merger.

He said it should have included profit forecasts for MergeCo, the company that will buy the shares of INL and Sky and be renamed Sky Network Television.

Hunn said the NZX was satisfied with the disclosure.

Macourt said MergeCo - or Sky mark II - was taking on $500 million of bank debt to pay cash to INL and Sky shareholders in the merger deal, but the Sky business was otherwise unchanged.

In his view, extra forecasts would not have been a useful addition to Sky's routine disclosures.

The last opportunity to object to the scheme of arrangement is on June 27 at the High Court hearing in Wellington for final orders.

It is nearly two years since INL sold its newspaper, magazine and distribution empire to Fairfax New Zealand.

Today, INL amounts to: a 78.4 per cent shareholding in Sky, $260 million of cash, and a single employee, New Zealand manager and company secretary Sean Wynne.

Wynne will exit when the deal is done.

INL's print operations began in Wellington in 1906 with the launch of The Dominion and the formation of the Wellington Publishing Co.

In the early 1970s, Wellington Publishing bought Truth, the Waikato Times and Wellington's Evening Post and changed its name to Indepedent Newspapers Ltd.

The company was also the first overseas newspaper investment for Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who bought a 29.57 per cent stake in 1964.