It has been a very tough year at Ma'ariv Holdings Ltd. (TASE: MARV-M). The company, part of the IDB Holding Corp. Ltd. (TASE:IDBH) group controlled by Nochi Dankner, sold Hebrew daily "Ma'ariv" (without its print shop) to Shlomo Ben-Tzvi for NIS 74 million. Most of the newspaper's 1,700 workers were dismissed after the court granted a stay of proceedings on September 23, 2012. Some of them had been with the newspaper for decades.
"From the third quarter of 2012, the company has been in the process of liquidation, and its financial statements have been drawn up with the adjustments required for a company in liquidation," the company's report states.
Within two years, the newspaper's revenue fell by 44%, while its operating loss shot up to NIS 230 million last year, from NIS 160 million in 2011 and NIS 100 million in 2010.
Revenue from advertising totaled NIS 76 million last year, compared with NIS 130 million in 2011. Revenue from sales of newspapers fell 28% to NIS 64 million. Revenue from the NRG website fell to just NIS 3.7 million last year, from NIS 8.3 million in 2011.
Ma'ariv posted a loss of NIS 305 million for 2012, but that did not prevent some of the group's senior managers from drawing high salaries. Very high. The salary cost of outgoing CEO Tal Raz was NIS 1.37 million, while that of editor-in-chief Nir Hefetz was NIS 1.17 million last year.
Three other senior managers had an aggregate salary cost of NIS 1.8 million.
At the end of 2012, Ma'ariv's deficit on shareholders' equity was NIS 207 million, compared with a positive shareholders' equity of NIS 77.4 million at the end of 2011.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 27, 2013
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