Channel Ten enters voluntary administration … Verizon closes $5.9 billion Yahoo acquisition … Kmart’s “aggressive” Amazon pricing strategy

By Dominic Powell and Emma Koehn.

The Ten Network has been placed into voluntary administration after shareholders Lachlan Murdoch and Bruce Gordon did not guarantee a $250 million loan to cover the station’s $200 million debt, reports the Herald Sun.

Administrators from KordaMentha have been appointed, and are currently undergoing a financial and operational assessment of the business.

“During this period, the administrators intend to continue operations as much as possible on a business as usual basis,” the company said in a statement.

“The directors of Ten regret very much that these circumstances have come to pass. They wish to take this opportunity to thank all Ten employees and contractors for their commitment and enthusiasm for Ten’s programs and business.”

Verizon closes $5.9 billion Yahoo acquisition

After a year of back and forth deliberating, American telecommunications company Verizon closed its $US4.5 billion ($5.9 billion) acquisition of tech giant Yahoo today.

Bloomberg reports the deal will see Yahoo’s former chief executive Marissa Mayer step down, and ex-AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong take the helm of the new Verizon unit called Oath, which will cover more than 50 media brands, including TechCrunch and the Huffington Post.

The deal was up in the air after a massive data breach was revealed midway through 2016, but after a $US350 million reduction in Yahoo’s sale price, the deal was finalised.

“The close of this transaction represents a critical step in growing the global scale needed for our digital media company,” said Marni Walden, Verizon president of media and telematics, in a statement.

Kmart’s “aggressive” Amazon pricing strategy 

Australia’s bricks-and-mortar retailers are laying down challenges to Amazon in the lead-up to its launch Down Under, with Kmart managing director Ian Bailey the latest to talk about price matching.

Bailey has told news.com.au Kmart plans to put prices “at or below Amazon”, saying “on the price front, we’re pretty aggressive”.

Kmart is not the only local business that believes it can beat the retail giant at its own low-price game, with electronics retail king Gerry Harvey saying earlier this year Harvey Norman will be looking at matching Amazon’s prices.

SMEs paying themselves late or not at all 

Research from Suncorp reveals some tough truths for SMEs in the lead-up to the end of financial year: one-third of business operators are using their personal savings to manage cashflow.

The survey of 500 SME owners suggests that while few buy into the idea of instant gratification, more than two-thirds report feeling financial stress or loss of motivation because of work-related matters.

A quarter of “new business owners”, who have been running their operations for three years or less, report they haven’t been paid by their business in 12 months. Only one in five business owners surveyed pay themselves superannuation.