Australia Media Open for Business

AUSTRALIA MEDIA OPEN FOR BUSINESS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Lyndal McFarland lyndal.mcfarland@dowjones.com]
Australia's decision to relax media-ownership rules has international buyout groups and industry chiefs jostling for pieces of the action. The government won't formalize changes to the country's 20-year-old media laws until later this year. But billions of dollars in deals already have been unveiled since lawmakers approved the new rules in late 2006. Prominent among the deal makers in the sector -- which is 40 billion Australian dollars in size (US$30.93 billion) -- have been buyout giants Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and CVC Asia Pacific. Irish billionaire Tony O'Reilly's Independent News & Media PLC last week revived a A$2.8 billion plan to buy newspaper-and-radio offshoot APN News & Media Ltd. with Providence Equity Partners and Carlyle Group. The new rules relax cross-ownership restrictions and scrap foreign-ownership limits.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117012558938491983.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing
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