Identity area
Type of entity
Corporate body
Authorized form of name
Provincial Newspapers (Qld.) Ltd., 1968-1988
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
- PNQ
- A. Dunn and Family
- A. Dunn and Company Pty. Ltd.
- Provincial Newspapers (Qld.) Pty Ltd, 1966 – 1968
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1968-1988
History
Provincial Newspapers (Qld.) Ltd. (PNQ) was the holding company formed in 1968 by the merger of six privately owned, regionally-based Queensland newspaper companies which represented multiple generations of family control since 1861. This included the newspaper businesses controlled by the Dunn, Manning, Irwin, Parkinson, Stephenson, and Kippens families. The Dunn family company’s name Provincial Newspapers (Qld.) was adopted for the merged company. Together the families controlled nine regional newspapers in Queensland.
Prominent among them was the Dunn family, who owned the Maryborough Chronicle, the Morning Bulletin in Rockhampton, the Warwick Daily News, and the Toowoomba Chronicle. The Dunns had previously traded as A. Dunn and Family, later A. Dunn and Company Pty Ltd. and then as Provincial Newspapers (Qld.).
Through its acquisition of the Melbourne-based Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) on 6 February 1987 Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd indirectly acquired a large parcel of shares in PNQ, which, in combination with other part-owned companies with shares in PNQ, gave News Ltd 48.6% of all PNQ shares. Taking a State-based approach the Trade Practices Commission (TPC) approved the News Ltd takeover of HWT but determined that in Queensland the acquisition would give News Ltd too much market share. The TPC advised that News Ltd should onsell its PNQ shares.
On 26th July 1988 News Ltd sold to Haswell Pty. Ltd., a company set up by Irish entrepreneur Anthony O’Reilly, principal shareholder of Independent Newspapers Plc of Ireland. On 3 November 1988 PNQ was renamed Australian Provincial Newspapers Ltd (APN).
Places
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Functions, occupations and activities
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Access points area
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Control area
Authority record identifier
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Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Revised
Level of detail
Full
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Revised, 21-May-2020