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Bruce Gordon ‘not in the way’ of Prime deal
Enigmatic billionaire Bruce Gordon has given Kerry Stokes his blessing for Seven West Media’s takeover of Prime.
Margin Call hears the two were in contact in the days before Stokes’s newly installed Seven West Media CEO James Warburton on Friday revealed the planned sublimation of the regional broadcaster Prime by its metropolitan partner Seven West Media.
“He’s not going to get in the way,” said a source familiar with Gordon’s thinking.
The 90-year-old Gordon - once a child magician, now a media tragic based in Bermuda - has towards 20 per cent of the $66m Prime, in addition to the entirety of its rival regional broadcaster WIN.
That would make Gordon one of Stokes’s biggest shareholders.
The deal could also provide a template for Gordon to replicate with Hugh Marks’s acquisitive Nine.
We won’t be surprised if the sale of WIN to Nine, or its sublimation for scrip in Nine, is on the agenda when Gordon, Marks and Nine chairman Peter Costello catch up when the nonagenarian visits for his annual summer trip to Australia later in the year.
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