Ann: Resignation of Director, page-6

This seems to be a consequence of Grennon and his team's effort to extract full control over the company with their combined 13.5% shareholding.

Sure on the upside it's given the Board a rev up, which is probably long overdue.

Yet on the downside, it has not been without serious costs to the company and potentially short and long-term detriment of shareholders.

A few examples:

1. A potential acquisition of Stuff digital appears to have been called off by Stuff as a result of this upheaval.
If it was the case, this would be a lost opportunity, as whilst Stuff may not have had compelling economics, they do have significant eyeballs across their site. For a business seeking to grow in real estate Classifieds, especially outside the Auckland market, this would have been very beneficial.

2. A distraction for staff
Given the fixation of 'editorial improvement' (read interference) proposed by the minority shareholders seeking control over the company, one wonders how the existing staff are feeling about their future.

3. A possible reason to pause for advertisers
If you are an advertiser on a national media business, I suspect you would want to be working with a somewhat neutral editorial mandate that isn't influenced or swayed by any individuals ideology.

4. More corporate costs
The egregious attempt to seize control of the company, with only a minority shareholding, appears to now be resulting in all sorts of additional corporate costs incurred by the Company. I'm not sure if it's true, however the papers mentioned that yet another investment bank, UBS, now has a defence mandate for the Company, in addition to Jarden with the One Roof review. I assume there would also be a significant uptick in legal costs incurred as part of this mess.

Sorry to labour the point, but the best path forward is clearly Grennon and his team stepping down from this mess, the Company arriving at an improved Board composition (with much of existing Board moving on) that comprises people with expertise in the specific areas required to run a good media business and knock off Trade Me in the Classifieds market..