Eroding Foreign Ownership Limits: CanWest Global Communications Initiatives in Canada and Australia

CanWest Global Communications is a Canadian media conglomerate with announced intentions to rank among the world's dominant media owners. In early 2007, the company engineered a complicated takeover of Alliance Atlantis Communications, one of Canada's largest media companies. In partnership with U.S. investment banker Goldman Sacks, CanWest acquired 36 percent ownership of thirteen specialty television channels owned by Alliance Atlantis. Goldman Sacks acquired 64 percent ownership, a level well above foreign ownership limits. The Alliance Atlantis takeover echoed CanWest’s modus operandi in Australia, where it took control of Network TEN in the 1990s despite similar strict limits on foreign media ownership. An investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Authority allowed the arrangement in 1995, but similar deals were subsequently outlawed. A ten-year debate in Australia over lifting a cross-ownership restriction that prevented newspaper companies from holding broadcasting licences was finally resolved in 2006 with abolition of not only cross ownership, but foreign ownership limits as well. As CanWest has long urged removal of foreign ownership limits in Canada, and as a review of these limits is currently under way, the end result of its initiatives in both countries could be the same.