Who will save Kelvin?

Posted by Peter Kirwan on 20 June 2008 at 11:00
Tags: GCAP PLC, Independent News & Media, Media, News International, United Business Media, emap

The happy-go-lucky saga of Kelvin MacKenzie’s potential candidacy in the by-election at Haltemprice and Howden cannot be allowed to hide the bleak reality.

Kelvin MacKenzie is a man who has lost an empire, but has yet to find a role.

Friends are worried that he is turning into the media world’s equivalent of Gazza.

The drink-sodden Geordie’s latter years were a steady downward spiral of broken dreams in dreary places: Gansu Tianma, Wolves, Boston United, Kettering Town and Burnley.

All the time, he was being helped through the darker moments by old mates from Spurs like Terry Vanables and Gary Mabbutt.

It’s a similar story with MacKenzie, who never properly recovered from the shock of leaving The Sun.

He was edged out of Sky after a few months in 1994. (The job had been arranged by his mate Rupert.) Then it was on to broken dreams in dreary places: LIVE TV, Talk Radio, Highbury House, Media Square.

Every one a winner? Not quite — despite the quiet behind-the-scenes help from his old mates Rupert and Les. At every port of call, MacKenzie’s self-destructive talent for destroying shareholder value resurfaced to devastating effect.

In the Sun column he used to announce that he wouldn’t be standing against Davis, McKenzie admitted that cashflow is, er, a little bit tight.

Will anyone help this once-proud man to conquer his demons? For his own good, MacKenzie needs to be prevented from ever running a business again. . .

Radio shares hammered: SMG’s rights issue underwater

Posted by Peter Kirwan on 3 December 2007 at 14:26
Tags: GCAP PLC, Media, SMG PLC

Worried about the share prices of newspaper groups? A quick look at the radio sector might make you feel slightly better.

On Friday, shares in GCap Media, the company that owns Capital and Classic FM, fell to their lowest level (FT — sub. reqd.) since the company was formed in May 2005 via the merger of GWR and Capital.

The culprit? UBS, which says it is worried about the effects of a consumer spending slowdown. GCap’s shares are down 40% since August.

The market’s lack of confidence in radio is bad news for SMG Media. The company that owns Virgin Radio is trying to raise £95m from investors via a rights issue.

Rights issues give existing investors the opportunity to buy newly-issued shares in a company at a discounted price. When the company announced its fund-raising drive a month ago, it priced the new shares at 15p. At the time, that represented an attractive discount to the topline price of 26.5p.

The problem for SMG is that its rights issue is now underwater (sub. reqd.) With the company’s shares trading at a record low of 12.5p, there’s no incentive for investors to buy new shares at 15p.

Under such circumstances, the banks who have agreed to underwrite a rights issue typically buy any shares that investors won’t touch.

SMG will get its £95m; but its bankers, Hoare Govett, seem set to swallow a whole lot of pain when the issue closes on 18 December.

More candidates for top job at GCap

Posted by Peter Kirwan on 27 November 2007 at 10:56
Tags: BSkyB, GCAP PLC, Google, United Business Media, emap

At the Guardian, Caitlin Fitzsimmons and John Plunkett have been chatting to headhunters. They’ve come up with a few more candidates for the vacant chief executive’s role at GCap. All are very long shots.

Malcolm Wall, chief executive of Virgin Media’s content division, is one of them. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising, since Virgin Media now seems more interested in super-fast broadband provision than competing head-on with BSkyB.

But Wall looks increasingly like an almost-man. He almost succeeded Clive Hollick at United Business Media. He almost became chief executive of ITV. And he almost got the top job at EMAP when that still meant something. Too many almosts, we think.

Then there’s Shaun Gregory, the former EMAP radio exec who is now UK chief executive of pan-European free mobile operator Blyk (a long shot, given that Blyk only launched a few months ago).

They’re also suggesting Mark Howe, the country sales director at Google UK. (He’d have to be insane, right?)

Kelvin The Teenaged Scribbler

Posted by Peter Kirwan on 26 November 2007 at 10:02
Tags: GCAP PLC, Johnston Press, News Corp

Kelvin MacKenzie seems to have reinvented himself as an equities analyst.

A few weeks ago, he had a go at Roger Parry, the incoming chairman at Media Square. This, you might recall, is the marketing services business that forced MacKenzie out as chairman in June.

Parry — stay with me — is also chairman of Johnston Press, whose share price isn’t exactly motoring at the moment.

Hence, perhaps, MacKenzie’s back-handed comment on the company’s first results announcement under its new chairman: “I just hope Roger is more successful at Media Square than he has been as chairman of Johnston Press . . . ”

Confronted by MacKenzie’s comment, Parry admitted to being “a bit surprised that Kelvin spoke up”. After all, he added, Media Square’s share price went from 22p to 9p during MacKenzie’s 15 months as chairman of the company.

Parry also described the situation he inherited from MacKenzie at Media Square as “dire”. He added that the company’s problems “were mostly of the company’s own making, rather than as a result of market conditions”.

The slapping down has only emboldened the man who tried to save Highbury House and lost the thick end of £1m in the process.

On Saturday, MacKenzie was at it again.

This time, the object of his considered analysis was Ralph Bernard, the outgoing chief executive of GCap.

“Uniquely disastrous”, MacKenzie told the Daily Telegraph. “Shareholders will be dancing in the streets. I’m critical of the board for not giving him the boot two years ago.”

Sadly, Bernard hasn’t replied publicly. He is unlikely to do so. “You never win with Kelvin,” said Bernard long ago. “Because he will always try to out-succeed in belittling you.”

Hopefully, MacKenzie’s attacks on relatively minor British media companies are just a warm-up for something much bigger. We note that News Corp will be releasing its Q3 results in January.

The date is marked in red letters on our diary.