Hancock prospecting on fairfax share sale

Australia mail@hancockprospecting.com.au Statement 5 July 2012

Hancock prospecting on fairfax share sale

Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd (HPPL) confirms that it has today sold 86,500,000 Fairfax Media Limited (Fairfax) ordinary shares to a major Australian fund manager. HPPL remains the largest single shareholder of Fairfax.

The sale was completed to resolve an issue that arose concerning the Directors and Officers Insurance Policy, in the situation of a Director having a greater than 15% shareholding in Fairfax.

This was one of the key issues recently raised by the Chairman of Fairfax and needed to be resolved by either the Chairman authorising endeavours to raise the 15% limit, which has been able to be reasonably achieved by other companies, or, as also discussed with the Chairman, by sale of shares so that the largest shareholder had less than 15%. Given the Chairman did not undertake the former; we have taken the latter and sold in a single tranche to minimise any market impact.

We continue to monitor the performance of our investment in Fairfax noting that the shares are trading at record or near record lows, which is an independent assessment of the Chairman’s performance. We also deny unsubstantiated rumours spread by others, that we are about to “make an offer” for the Company, when we have previously stated we are not seeking control of Fairfax, just the appointment of 2 directors plus an independent out of up to 12 directors on the board.

We again urge the Chairman to tell concerned shareholders that he will accept proposed milestones regarding his performance in the interests of Fairfax and its shareholders, or propose other reasonable KPI’s to meet for the continuance of his Chairmanship past the AGM in November 2012.

John Klepec
Chief Development Officer
Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd

ends

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