Fairfax Media buys 50% of Melbourne real estate rival for $35 million: Midday roundup

Fairfax Media will pay $35 million for a 50% stake in a rival Melbourne real estate publication set up by a former Age staffer just last year.

Under the widely anticipated deal, Metro Media Publishing will house both its assets and that of Fairfax Community Newspapers in Victoria.

Antony Catalano, who founded Metro Media Publishing last year after a long career with the Melbourne broadsheet, will lead the bulked-up group.

Catalano launched The Weekly Review in April 2010 in partnership with a number of real estate agencies after serving out a non-compete period following his departure from the position of advertising director at The Age.

The glossy magazine took about $20 million in real estate advertising from Fairfax when it started being distributed to home owners in Melbourne’s wealthy eastern suburbs.

Fairfax acquired 50% of MMP by purchasing equity stakes from some existing MMP shareholders.

Catalano has a private stake alongside real estate agents – Kay & Burton, Jellis Craig, Marshall White and Bennison Mackinnon, plus several others.

The deal is subject to ACCC approval.

Dick Smith faces investigation over shonky hard drive sale

Electronics chain Dick Smith could face fines and compensation claims if it is found to have misled consumers about their goods and services, after a storm over a customer buying what he believed to be a new disc drive only to find it held malware-infested pirated films.

Questions are now being raised about whether the sale of second-hand electronic goods is more commonplace than expected, with consumers complaining on tech sites and Twitter about the purchase of “new” products which were in fact second-hand.

According to reports, the Fair Trading Commission is set to conduct a formal investigation into whether the practice is “widespread and systemic” and says retailers who mislead customers about the nature of goods could face fines of up $1.1 million per offence. 

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commissioner said it couldn’t “confirm or deny any correspondence that we’ve had with Fair Trading.”

Dick Smith told Fairfax the sale of the used good was a one-off.

The Australian sharemarket up in early trade, but to close year down 600 points

The Australian sharemarket is up almost 1% in early trade, on the back of positive leads, but is set to end the year well down.

At just before 11pm in the last trading day before Christmas, the S&P/ASX 2000 was up 0.94% to 4129.2 and the All Ordinaries index was up 0.89% to 4179.0.

This means it will be down almost 600 points or more than 13% through 2011.

Overnight, Wall St rose on positive employment data. The S&P 500 Index was up 0.83%.

Over the year, the US market is down 1.3%.