Farewell, Mr Kirsh

August 25th, 2009

William Kirsh’s departure as CEO of Primedia has been on the cards for some time, and is unlikely to rock the boat much.

Kirsh, who took over his father’s small radio company and turned it into a media giant though aggressive acquisitions in the 1990s, will remain as deputy chair and a significant shareholder. Kuben Pillay takes over, representing a shift in power from the Kirsh family to the Mineworkers Investment Company, the shareholders who brought Pillay in a few years ago.

Insiders have been saying for some months that Kirsh had been disengaging from the company and Pillay was effectively running it. Kirsch became very religious a few years ago and this has taken more and more of his time and focus. Also, with Primedia having become a private equity company a few years ago, Kirsh’s aggressive and shrewd deal-making skills were no longer in much demand.

Kirsch was a merchant banker and dealmaker who took charge of his father’s spunky little radio station company in the late 1980s and took it public. He used his brash deal-making style to build it into a powerhouse, stepping on more than a few toes on the way. The value of the company rocketed as the market backed his style of borrowing to pay high prices for a range of media interests. But when some of these investments - particularly the international ones - turned sour, and it became clear he had paid too much for some of them, the stock plummeted and he was forced to eat humble pie.

To his credit, he cleaned up the company, selling and closing assets to bring the focus back onto the major performers, such as radio. He also turned to his Orthodox Jewish roots.

Kirsch himself led the move to take the company private a few years ago, sharing control with the Mineworkers. But this meant they had to borrow large amounts and focus on paying back the debt. When the climate turned tough in the last couple of years, there was not much deal-making to be done and Kirsch gradually became less and less engaged - to the point where there was a restlessness among his senior management.

It is to his credit that he recognised that he was no longer playing to his strengths and it was time to move over. The switch to Pillay’s leadership is expected to be seemless, as he has effectively been running the operations for some time and enjoys the respect of his management team.

Nevertheless, it is the end of a long era in which the Kirsch’s were leading media personalities in the country. They started the company by exploiting a loophole in bantustan policy - getting permission to broadcast medium wave from the nominally independent Bophuthatswana. Criticism of their cosiness with the discredited homeland was offset by the spunkiness and independence of Radio 702. Now the empire that grew around that base is in the hands of a trade union investment fund.

The circle has turned.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Radio