Jul 06 2009
Significant, but not significant enough
The Naspers corporate site is frustrating for a few reasons, most important being the errors it frequently throws up.
I hit upon another error today on the “Company Operations” page, where I was taken to the Naspers investments in Brazil, when I clicked to read what Naspers owns in China.
The broken link to China hides an important bit of information, which only came to light last week, when Naspers announced its provisional results for 2008/9 (under the heading “Significant acquisitions”), namely that it had acquired a 37% interest in Xin An Media, a leading newspaper publisher in China, for a cash consideration of R315 million (US$31 million) in December 2008.
A number of other investments appeared under the heading “Significant acquisitions”, although none of these investments were judged significant enough by senior management at the time, to inform the shareholders and investment community with a press release.
A search of SA media archives also produced nothing, which means SA journalists didn’t know about the investment until last week.