Firstly if you look at the growth assest PBL and now CMH has had . They were/ are foxtel/foxsports/Crown/Burswood/ Seek/ninemsn/carsales. The assets that have long since seen their best days and are on a slow march to zero are ch9 and ACP magazines. The major errors were onetel and the US Casino play.

Kerry Packer did not want to invest in foxtel. He thought pay TV would not take off in Australia. Whoops. He did not want to invest in Crown and pushed back on Burswood. He never undersood the internet and wanted to sell out of EBay well before ourt JV had reached premium value (i.e. he pushed to sell out at a price that is about 1/4 what it would be worth now!)…If was still alive he would have kept ch9 and ACP and thus watched $B disappear as the tradional media assets came off their never to return to highs.

James pushed foxtel/foxtsports and the Crown/Burswood investments. He pushed PBL into internet plays. Yes he also pushed the onetel investment and yes he pushed the US casino investment…So how to measure all of this. .

PBL shares - now CWN and CMJ, have provided a better TSR (total share return) from the day KP died than has NWS, SEV, FXJ, TEN, or TAB.

Moreover CGF ( Challenger - which was James second biggest CPH investment in dollar terms since the day KP passed away) has in TSR terms outperformed MQG, PPT, let alone the basket cases of MFS, BNB.

So even CGF has done well in a mkt where RAMS and Wizard fell on REALLY hard times and Aussie was effectively bought by CBA for circa $150m.

In summary James has three major public compnay investments.
CWN has the lowest debt to ebitda ratio of any major casino company in the world - less than 1x.

CGF has $350m cash and no debt in the parent company, and around $600 m in excess capital in the life company - a more capital rich position than ever.

CMJ - 500 mill in cash plus the pay tv assets.

No doubt he made a HUGE mistake in Vegas. But this stuff is only easy when you have the benefit of hindsight…

As to the point re PBL recapitalisation…Are you NUTS??? PBL Media has carsales (which they are floating now to recoup somedollars), they sold Seek to provide cash to the balance sheet to use (I guess) in the sharebuy back . But ch9 and ACP will never, in my humble opinion, be worth what they were at the time of the CVC transaction….

You think CVC put more money in because it was a great investment or because they had to shore up the balance sheet to avoid debt issues???? To put more money into PBL Media would have been a silly thing for CMJ to do. Yes then Kerry Stokes (who has long lusted after a decent Pay TV play) has jumped into the register but unless he is prepared to offer HUGE dollars the Packer investment is safe and if the Packewrs exit it will eb for alot more than the current price…Foxtel and FOxsports are only going one way in value terms.(in my opinion).

SO Glen I love your stuff but pls try to get a little more balance into this analysis.

Daniel Petre