APN News & Media plans to go to the High Court to defend an IRD claim to $48m (plus 50% penalties and interest) over interest claimed on “certain financing transactions”. The dispute involves tax of NZ$48 million for the period up to 31 December 2012. The IRD is seeking to impose penalties of 50% of the tax in dispute and …

"DCD Affair"  OFF TO THE RACES AND I’LL PUT $10 ON THAT BLACK AND WHITE FILLY: Overnight the GlobalDairyTrade registered a very strong rise with the TWI up 3.1 percent. Despite the lingering headlines related to consumer and offshore regulator jitters about the discovery of minute traces of DCD in some milk products last year, the strength of the auction …

APN Battle  The Australian Financial Review gets to the nub of the stoush that saw five of Herald publisher APN’s directors walk overnight after Ireland’s Independent News and Media exercised its shareholding muscle. The article it notable for suggesting INM’s own CEO Vincent Crowley might be a candidate for the new APN CEO role. Crowley – who is Irish – …

Updated  APN News & Media chairman Peter Hunt has this evening formally announced his resignation and that of CEO and Managing Director Brett Chenoweth and three other directors – John Maasland, Melinda Conrad and John Harvey –  to the ASX. The five resignations take effect from 9am tomorrow morning (Australian Eastern Seaboard time). A further director, Kevin Luscombe, will retire …

APN Battle  Tough words from The Australian’s veteran business commentator John Durie this afternoon. The bottom line in the APN News & Media battle is as things stand, the equity raising is dead. “Shareholders own the company, not the chief executive Brett Chenoweth and chairman Peter Hunt, who now have no choice but to resign. ” Durie then dishes out …

APN Battle  The Australian reports that APN News & Media’s second-largest shareholder, Simon Marais, supports the potential resignations of the company’s chief executive and chairman, and will not support a proposed capital raising. “It’s better that they go because it’s a silly thing to do … putting the cart before the horse,”  Marais, the managing director of fund manager Allan …

APN Battle   This is how the Australian Financial Review illustrated its story this morning spelling out the predicament facing APN – publisher of the New Zealand Herald and a raft of media assets across the Tasman: Regional newspapers, radio, outdoor advertising and digital. Judging by the indepth Australian media reports the stoush boils down to a strategic choice – raise …

NZ Inc was blown away when shown through ‘Banyan Tree on the Bund’  – a terrific six-star hotel towards the mouth of the Huangpo River – during a recent research trip to China.  The developer is Pengxin better known in Shanghai as a real estate developer than as the buyer of the Crafar farms. online marketing jobs Pengxin chairman Jiang …

Parliament’s outgoing Speaker Lockwood Smith let the proverbial out of the bag by revealing in his valedictory speech this evening that Simon Tucker is NZ’s High Commissioner-designate to Canada. Tucker – a former MFAT official and Fonterra manager – was until recently a boss at DairyNZ. Smith acknowledged Tucker as one of a trio of talented former staffers who had …