Stuff CEO and owner Sinead Boucher. Photo: RNZ/Nick Monro
The owner of one of New Zealand's biggest media companies has made a change in her shareholding, according to company records.
CEO and owner Sinead Boucher has changed her shareholding in Stuff Digital from being the owner of the one and only share to being the sole holder of one million shares.
The changes were lodged with the NZ Companies Office on 7 February.
There is no reason given for the addition of 999,999 shares, however having more shares can make it easier to change shareholding, according to a business analyst.
Boucher bought Stuff from its Australian owners Nine Entertainment for $1 in 2020.
Last December, the media company was divided in two - Stuff Digital administers stuff.co.nz, Neighbourly and its audio and video divisions. Newspaper brands and their own websites like The Post, The Press and The Waikato Times were incorporated into Masthead Publishing under Stuff Limited.
At the time, Stuff's CFO Dale Bridle said in an email to staff the move was "conscious uncoupling" to give both businesses their own focuses.
When asked if Boucher was planning to sell shares or part of the company, a Stuff spokesperson said in a statement it was part of the process.
"The change in number of shares over a month ago was simply part of the internal transaction to finalise the reorganisation of the business we began last year - the separation of our masthead business and Stuff Digital, which includes New Zealand's most popular news website stuff.co.nz.
"Stuff Digital and Stuff masthead publishing continue to be 100 percent part of the Stuff Group, owned by our owner and publisher, Sinead Boucher."
The business changes come as Stuff's biggest web and print rival, NZME, is facing its own corporate changes.
Auckland-based Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon has bought a 9.97 percent stake in the media company and has lobbed other shareholder blocs to vote out the company's current board members and install himself and three others at an 29 April shareholder meeting.
Devon Funds Head of Retail Greg Smith said one reason to increase shares was to bring others into the company ownership.
"Typically, when you have just one shareholder, a motivation for issuing new shares is potentially when you want to bring on additional shareholders.".
Integrity Institute director Dr Bryce Edwards said it was important that society knew who owned various media because they were one of the pillars of democracy.
He said there could be several reasons to vary the number of shares ranging from preparation for sale to floating the company on the New Zealand Stock Exchange.
"It's already been divided into essentially two businesses," he said.
The mastheads had different journalists and a subscription model, unlike Stuff Digital where content was free.
A sale or other moves would probably require a number of shares.
"You really need to be able to divide that up so that you have possibilities of either selling part of it to one other owner or maybe to many other owners, especially if you were going to float it on the Stock Exchange for example."
He said news media companies differed in some respects from other businesses.
"Even though media often isn't so profitable, it has a lot of status and because it can give owners a lot of influence.
"As we're seeing at the moment, globally, but also in New Zealand, there's an increased interest especially amongst wealthy individuals and entities, of owning media.
"And so we are seeing around the world that wealthy individuals are buying things like The Washington Post or Twitter - now called X - because wealthy people want to be able to use those platforms for pushing their own agenda perhaps, and having a stake in democracy.
"I think sometimes there is a bit of concern that in New Zealand that we don't know enough about our media company owners and how they're structuring the ownership, and when they want to sell how they do that.
"It is really in the public interest to have scrutiny of these things."
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