Articles by Stephen Mayne

Ten Network Holdings is offering a bargain basement four-for-five share offer at 20c tomorrow. Shareholders might be advised to get involved.

James Packer is getting a dream run from the media on his plans for a Sydney casino. Why isn’t anyone asking harder questions about his strategy?

The story of the Commonwealth Bank’s extraordinary profits is one of market share, market power, credit quality and huge volume growth on home loans ever since Paul Keating introduced compulsory superannuation.

Market capitalisation of listed companies is arguably the best public measure of who is creating private wealth in our globalised world — and it correlates reasonably well against the Olympics medal count.

There may have been a record 16 candidates in the Melbourne byelection but only two them bothered to turn up for this morning’s formal declaration of the poll. It told the tale of the tape.

If the Victorian Liberals were smart at the next federal election they could do a deal with the Greens to shore up Bandt in Melbourne and undermine some key Labor Right ministers who are particularly hostile to the Greens.

Ever since Senator John Faulkner told Paul Howes to “put a sock in it” last Sunday, the frenetic media tart, AWU national secretary and political kingmaker has been surprisingly quiet.

In terms of own goals, the Labor Right war machine has reached new levels of productivity in attacks on its own supporters in the Melbourne byelection.

ASIC boss Greg Medcraft is making plenty of noise about reviewing Australia’s takeover provisions to protect minority shareholders from so-called creeping takeover bids.

In his first day as Herald Sun editor, Damon Johnston decided to take a whack at Victoria’s 665 elected local government councillors.

Whoever would have thought the almighty US Republican Party would end up having a rich kid from Toorak as its most powerful kingmaker, even to the point of publicly lecturing an endorsed presidential candidate about staff selection on Twitter.

Always remember this: Rupert Murdoch loves newspapers and is a control freak who fanatically obsesses about sustaining his family’s powerful dynasty.

McCrann and Bolt have become self-appointed chief leaders in Gina Rinehart’s attempt to seize board and editorial control of Fairfax Media.

After James Packer blazed the trail and demonstrated how a full-on media campaign, combined with the calling of an EGM, can destabilise a public company, GetUp! has followed in his footsteps

For all the hand-wringing about the future of journalism and the importance of quality newspapers for our democracy, there’s a very simple solution.

Having seen how Gina Rinehart treats her kids, does any self-interested Fairfax Media investor seriously fancy being a minority shareholder in a complex beast controlled by Australia’s most litigious Rich Lister.