No one at West Australian Newspapers or at PBL will “pay” for the losses of around $100 million confirmed today on the sale of their combined 100% stake in struggling cinema chain Hoyts to the private equity group Pacific Equity Partners.

After all, the man responsible for the nasty loss on the deal at WAN is former CEO Ian Law who now runs PBL Media. At PBL the responsible people include deputy executive chairman, Chris Anderson, chairman, James Packer and CEO, John Alexander.

Both groups paid $173.5 million for 50% each of Hoyts when they bought it from the private Packer company, Consolidated Press, back in 2004. WAN paid cash, PBL paid Cons Press 11.1 million PBL shares. There was debt as well. Some reports said it had an “enterprise value” of $520 million back then.

The statement released today makes interesting reading.

“About A$150 million” is nice and imprecise, given the written down values of the 50% stakes for both companies, are close to it. The “enterprise value of $440 million” includes a lot of debt: at least $140 million to $150 million. Being of generous spirit, based on the $173.5 million initial cost, it would indicate a loss of $23.5 million each. But both companies upvalued their stakes to more than $200 million, so the loss on the written up value is more than $50 million each.

The other interesting point from the statement is that the only PBL executive mentioned is Martin Dalgleish “The CEO of New Media at PBL”. He got the hospital pass it would seem. He is a digital man whereas Hoyts is very much old media and was supposed to have been killed off by TV. No mention here about how the supposed cross-promotional platform approach spruiked by both companies when they did the deal hasn’t worked. DVDs, downloading on the internet, TV, especially pay TV, have all taken business away from Hoyts.  There’s no recognition there from PEP of the continuing impact of “new media”.

Lots of companies from here and overseas kicked the tires and came away unimpressed. PBL even tried to get WAN to buy its stake. I wonder if the Seven Network forced that deal to die?

Pacific Equity Partners were the buyers of last resort. And an Indian cinema chain was supposed to have been interested at $450 million. But PEP prevailed. Is that the hospital pass in this bit of pass the parcel?