MEDIAWATCH: Alt-Right Canadian Billionaire inches closer to total NZME takeover in time for election

As New Zealand heads towards Election 2026, questions around media ownership and editorial independence are no longer abstract. With billionaire investor Jim Grenon now holding nearly 19% of NZME, the country’s largest commercial news platform, the lines between ownership, influence and democracy are being stress-tested in real time.

Quietly, surely, the spider creeps as he prepares for editorial domination of NZME before this year’s election…

Billionaire Share Accumulation and NZ Takeover Rules

Jim Grenon lifts NZME shareholding again
Businessman Jim Grenon has lifted his stake in NZ Herald publisher NZME again – acquiring another one million shares for $1.15 million.

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Grenon now has 35,694,802 shares – or 18.97% of the media firm – just behind Australian investment firm Spheria Asset Management, which has 35,702,300 shares.

The announcement was made to the NZX this morning.

Takeover rules start to apply if any shareholder wants to acquire more than 20% of a publicly listed company.

Grenon did not wish to comment when approached today.

NZME’s 2025 full-year financial results were released earlier this week – see item below.

NZME

Editorial Independence vs Owner Power in New Zealand Media

…Former Herald Editor Gavin Ellis has made the point earlier last year at the Better Public Media AGMA that within NZ News media the cultural convention inside the NZ Fourth Estate was a clear demarcation of power between the Editor’s Independence and the  Owner’s interests.

He could not recall a moment in NZ Fourth Estate history whereby an Owner was attempting the level of editorial control that Grenon is attempting to take.

He points out that only convention has ensured the owner never compromised editorial independence and that an Owner with a very different editorial direction could easily ignore those conventions.

Culture War Politics and the Risk to the Fourth Estate

I think Grenon is exactly like Trump, in that he won’t care about conventions and just use the raw power ownership grants him.

Before he gains that power, he has had to trick the board into believing he has no radical culture war editorial agenda.

I believe Grenon represents a unique threat to NZ Democracy because what he as a radicalised culture war Billionaire could do to the largest media platform in NZ will have enormous damage to society.

We know Grenon is an alt-Right fanatic because he helped set up far right Hate blog, The Centrist.

Look.

NZME is already a hard right media platform.

From Radio Hauraki for private school boys to ZB Capitalist Mythology, NZME is as right wing as it gets, but within that paradigm, 2 plus 2 is always going to equal 4, from Mike Hosking Breakfast to Heather Duplicity Allan, they espouse their right wing nonsense from a reasoning landscape that acknowledges 2+2=4.

That is NOT the case with the anti-vaccine, anti-global warming, anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-Trans alt-Right, indeed in alt-Right land (which is situated next to MAGA-stan and Qanon Island), 2+2=4 whatever the fuck alt-Right claim it to equal.

The Right Wing Trolls scream, ‘who cares’.

We all should,

NZME is a huge media platform, Grenon gained the power he did by opening a mere $9m (which is chump change to a Billionaire), he holds editorial control over one of the largest media platforms in the country and could force people to believe an enormous amount of crazy alt-right culture war bullshit.

That should concern all of us!

Election 2026 and the Timing of Media Influence

I believe Grenon’s increase of share holdings is timed for this year’s election so he and his pet spiders can implement a radical editorial overhaul in time for next years election.

The Fourth Estate is there to challenge the powerful, it is not there to be used as a means of control by the powerful.