{"id":31935,"date":"2013-02-19T10:12:36","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T08:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=31935"},"modified":"2013-02-19T10:40:42","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T08:40:42","slug":"sekunjalo-targets-digital-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/31935\/sekunjalo-targets-digital-expansion\/","title":{"rendered":"Sekunjalo eyes digital media expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iqbal Surv\u00e9<\/a>, founder and chairman of the Sekunjalo Group<\/a>, says he will allocate capital towards expanding the digital offerings within Independent Newspapers\u2019 South African division.<\/p>\n

Irish based group, The Independent News and Media (INM<\/a>), has agreed to sell its South African unit to Sekunjalo Independent Media Consortium, led by Surv\u00e9, for a price of R2 billion.<\/p>\n

INM SA includes online news portal, iol.co.za, and print titles including The Star, the Sunday Independent, The Mercury, and the Cape Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to bring this asset back home,\u201d Surv\u00e9 told BusinessTech, by way of motivation for acquiring the business. \u201cIt\u2019s important to have it back in our hands. I believe in the growth of our economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Citibank acted as advisors to Sekunjalo, Surv\u00e9 said that the group was not the highest bidder, at R2 billion, with one bid coming in at R2.6 billion. It was reported that the owners of South African daily The New Age, the Gupta family, also made a bid.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a tough bidding process, but we are happy to have been the team chosen. Maintaining jobs is our main priority,\u201d Surv\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n

On the group\u2019s expansion plans, Surv\u00e9 said he would look to expand the group\u2019s vernacular titles following on from the success of Zulu language daily, Isolezwe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is huge potential to convert our portals,\u201d the company lead said, adding that he would allocate capital \u00a0towards expanding the group\u2019s digital presence.<\/p>\n

The deal still requires both INM shareholder approval and Competition Commission approval in South Africa, but Surv\u00e9 is confident that it will go through, noting his experience of having conducted 40 acquisitions over the past 10 years.<\/p>\n

More on\u00a0Sekunjalo<\/h3>\n

SA media arm set for R2 billion sale<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Bids for SA media arm short by R1.18 billion<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Break Independent up: SACP<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The billion rand bid for Independent<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Independent confirms possible sale: report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iqbal Surv\u00e9, chairman of the Sekunjalo Group, says he will allocate capital towards expanding the digital offerings within Independent Newspapers\u2019 SA division.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3523,5200,26,5026,5198,5199,1604,1606,3797,3525,5191,3524],"class_list":["post-31935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-cape-times","tag-citibank","tag-headline","tag-iol-co-za","tag-iqbal-surve","tag-isolezwe","tag-media-1","tag-print-media","tag-sekunjalo","tag-sunday-independent","tag-the-mercury","tag-the-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31935"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31942,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31935\/revisions\/31942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}