Australian lender sells debt in New Zealand media owner at a discount

According to The Australian Financial Review, the debt tranche owned by the seller, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), represents a large chunk of the NZ$388 million MediaWorks holds in senior loans. It looked to unload the debt through an auction that took place Friday.

The move comes five months after another lender, Allied Irish Banks, reportedly sold between NZ$30-$35 million of debt at between NZ$.0.60-$0.70 cents on the dollar to Asian hedge funds.

Other lenders of MediaWorks' debt include Lloyds Banking Group, the Bank of New Zealand, Westpac, Royal Bank of Scotland, JP Morgan and Rabobank, domestic media reported.

IronBridge bought MediaWorks, which owns TV3, Channel 4 and a range of radio stations in 2007 for an estimated NZ$790 million from Canada's CanWest Global, which owned 70% of the asset, and other minority shareholders.

Last week, reports surfaced that CBA also sold about A$37 million ($37.6 million) of senior debt in CVC Asia Pacific-owned Nine Entertainment, picked up by hedge funds. BNP Paribas was said to have unloaded around A$90 million of the debt at the same time.

Nine, one of the largest private equity-owned companies in Australia, has A$2.6 billion of senior debt, which CVC is looking to restructure.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Media
• Ironbridge Capital
• New Zealand
• TMT