Karl Stefanovic has come to an agreement to settle his business dispute with podcast partner Keshnee Kemp Ibrahim by buying the businesswoman out in what insiders hint is a seven-figure deal.

In a statement released on Friday morning an unnamed spokeswoman said Stefanovic and Ibrahim “have today agreed to settle the litigation and dispute between them”.

The dispute, which was headed to the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday, was in relation to 123 Podcast Pty Ltd, the company they set at the start of the year to produce the podcast, The Karl Stefanovic Show.

“While the terms of this settlement are confidential, the arrangement results in Mr Stefanovic acquiring the interests of Ms Ibrahim in the company and Ms Ibrahim exiting the company as a shareholder and director,” the statement reads.

“Ms Ibrahim has also agreed to discontinue the litigation she commenced against Mr Stefanovic.”

The news comes a week after lawyers for Stefanovic requested the matter be adjourned to allow a court-appointed valuer more time to value the business.

Stefanovic was expected to be called on Tuesday to give evidence – something which could have forced into the open rumours the podcast had some financial backing by Australia’s richest woman billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart.

The right-wing Rinehart is a financial supporter of One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, who also happened to be Stefanovic’s first guest on the podcast in January.

A court appearance would also have left Stefanovic open to questioning about his sacking from Nine Media’s Today show, his sacking also from ARN radio network and the role his accountant Anthony Bell, who holds a minor 10 per cent shareholding in the company, played in setting up the podcast business.

Stefanovic and Ibrahim each held 45 per cent stakes in the company.

On Friday, sources for Ibrahim, who has been holidaying in Italy where she reportedly owns a retreat, said she was relieved and happy to finally have the matter behind her.

MORE: Karl’s secret $20m plan after shock Nine exit

The source also confirmed the court proceedings have not yet been discontinued, but will be.

Ibrahim had invested $125,000 of her own money into the start-up before her relationship with Stefanovic fell apart in August after Stefanovic was sacked from Nine’s Today show on June 25.

As revealed exclusively by news.com.au, Stefanovic had blamed Ibrahim for Nine sacking him over his interview with UK right wing agitator Tommy Robinson.

This was despite Stefanovic suggesting Robinson as a guest and saying he was keen to do the interview.

He had also threatened to withhold his name and likeness from the show and, according to sources, gave Ibrahim one day to buy him out. He is said to have then pushed back on her attempts to recruit a valuer.

MORE: TV star’s $9m payout after shock Nine exit

The dispute landed the pair in court last month after Ibrahim was forced to seek an urgent injunction seeking to stop Stefanovic pushing her out of the business at a planned board meeting.

The court heard Stefanovic had been “oppressive” and “unfairly discriminatory” in his dealings with Ibrahim after the relationship broke down “irretrievably” on or about August 7 before ordering a valuer be appointed before the matter could return for hearing on October 13 and 14. Stefanovic had denied these allegations.

That hearing will now not proceed.

Blanche farewelled

Blanche d’Alpuget was remembered at her wake at North Bondi RSL Club on Thursday afternoon with some carefully chosen words.

There were words of thanks and acknowledgment from the writer’s surviving son, the artist Louis Pratt, a glowing tribute penned by absent friend, actor Miriam Margolyes, and the reading of a poem by obscure Christian Scientist Peter Henniker-Heaton, a work d’Alpuget read at the State funeral of her late husband Bob Hawke in 2019.

There was also a brief reminiscence from her daughter-in-law Brianna on d’Alpuget’s renowned fearlessness, anecdotes from her biographer Derek Rielly, and a musical performance from a live band.

But the words that seemed to resonate loudest with some in the room were the unseen and unspoken words believed to be contained in a plain white envelope that had been attached to d’Alpuget’s blue and white coffin at her private funeral earlier in the day at Macquarie Park Cemetery and Crematorium in North Ryde.

The envelope, containing some message intended for her stepmother in the great beyond, was from Hawke’s youngest child, Rosslyn Dillon.

Unlike older sister Sue Pieters-Hawke, Ms Dillon, who is an admitted agoraphobic, didn’t attend the wake.

That’s not to say her presence wasn’t felt among the 60 to 80 guests.

Did her envelope contain a note of gratitude to d’Alpuget or a treasured item?

Was it a bill, or a photograph?

Given Ms Dillon’s last public exchange with her father’s second wife involved an ugly lawsuit over his estate, the secret message that d’Alpuget would never read may also have traversed other matters.

D’Alpuget was, after all, the writer who mined Ms Dillon’s destructive heroin addiction for her Hawke biographies including 1982’s Robert J Hawke – A Biography.

Her pages exposing Ms Dillon’s private pain helped win over public sympathy for the womanising and boozing Hawke, who was also in the middle of a long-running affair with the book’s author.

The strategy worked, and Hawke was swept to power in the 1983 election.

Ms Dillon and d’Alpuget also had other unfinished business.

Months after Hawke’s death in December 2019, the relationship between the two women took a turn for the worse when Ms Dillon sued her stepmother for a larger slice of Hawke’s $18 million estate.

Hawke had left each of his three children, Ms Pieters-Hawke, Ms Dillon, son Stephen and d’Alpuget’s son Louis $750,000 in his will, with the balance of his estate going to his wife.

Ms Dillon, a mother-of-two, launched a legal claim shortly after Hawke’s death for a larger $4.2 million slice of her father’s estate.

She argued she was living in poverty on $1800 a fortnight, struggling to meet her needs and needed new teeth.

In the end, the case reportedly settled for a drop in the bucket, securing just $50,000 after legal fees.

D’Alpuget once admitted Hawke’s children initially rejected her when she and Hawke went public with their relationship in 1995, some 20 years after the lovers first took up together in 1976, when both were married to other people and he was president of the ACTU.

Hawke wouldn’t divorce first wife Hazel until his prime ministerial career was over in 1994. He married d’Alpuget the following year.

Perhaps the sentiment expressed in the envelope was also on behalf of older sister Ms Pieters-Hawke?

She also had some memorable run-ins with her stepmother.

The most public of these occurred in the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge at Brisbane Airport in 2011 when d’Alpuget, having partaken in a few afternoon beverages, lunged at her stepdaughter when Ms Pieters-Hawke approached her.

Ms Pieters-Hawke was, at the time, writing her mother Hazel Hawke’s biography.

In her biography, Ms Pieters-Hawke gave her mother, who died two years later in 2013, the right-of-reply concerning assertions d’Alpuget made in her book, Hawke: The Prime Minister.

Ms Pieters-Hawke insisted some of d’Alpuget’s interpretations of her mother were “wrong” and “inaccurate”.

Despite the hostilities, Hawke’s eldest daughter and d’Alpuget later apparently resolved their issues, with Ms Pieters-Hawke crediting her stepmother with being an attentive grandparent to her children.

Stanton takes a break following Nine’s publishing brouhaha

Who took charge of the mop up after all hell broke loose at Nine’s business title, the Australian Financial Review, over the departure of editor-in-chief James Chessell and the poaching of editorial business editor Nick Bonyhady?

It seems the task was left largely to the woman implicated directly in the mess, publishing director Tory Maguire – the same Nine executive who signed off on the media company’s foundational support of boutique publisher Rampart, the start-up and rival that ultimately conducted the raid on Nine’s publishing division.

But then, who else was going to do the job, with Nine CEO Matt Stanton heading off on leave after Nine’s director of streaming and broadcast Amanda Laing announced she was departing – the lawyer many saw as his eventual successor?

Also on leave that week was Stanton’s other close report, Nine head of strategy David Ash, who, we were assured yesterday, has since returned to his post.

For surely Stanton wouldn’t leave Maguire solely in charge of such a sensitive clean-up operation?

Apparently he would, though he may have had some initial concerns. At least that’s how his decision to sign off to staff via an internal webcast on Tuesday, September 29, was perceived by outraged journos within Nine’s publishing division.

In a bright tone, Stanton informed his staff he was headed off to the UK to see his elderly parents. Some hint he also had a wedding to attend.

Nine insiders maintain Stanton, like his predecessor Mike Sneesby, is “frightened” of Nine’s publishing division and continues to let it run independently of Nine’s broadcast operations – this despite broadcasting bringing in more revenue.

All of which might go some way to helping explain why Nine’s interventionary chairman Peter Tonagh has become more hands on of late.

Any exchanges Tonagh might have had with Maguire in the hope of settling outraged troops in her publishing division would also have provided him with an opportunity to observe, at close range, the operational style of the woman who would be Nine’s next – and first female – CEO.

This column is sure Maguire must have been mightily relieved when her only female rival for the job, Laing, was taken out of play last month and handed a redundancy.

MacDonald’s classy return to the ABC

Two years after being controversially axed to clear a space in the ABC’s on-air schedule for ABC chairman Kim Williams’ favourite Hamish Macdonald, popular Sydney radio commentator Sarah Macdonald will return to the airwaves at ABC 702 in 2027.

The announcement has to have been particularly sweet for Macdonald, whose audience protested vigorously in the months after ABC head of audio Ben Latimer made the cut by bombarding the ABC with complaints and switching off their radios.

The broadcaster was all class at the time, as she was again this week when news of her return, to James Valentine’s afternoon shift, broke, though it was hard to miss her pointed shout-out to the station’s “brilliant new station manager” Nick Lowther.

There was no shout-out for the ABC’s head of audio Ben Latimer, who must be under considerable pressure at the broadcaster given the station’s continued ratings slump, which is in line with a worrying decline at ABC Melbourne which plummeted to a 4.1 share earlier this year.

The news was equally bad at chairman Williams’ favourite station Radio National, which reportedly fell to its second worst result of all time in the latest survey, while there wasn’t much to celebrate at youth broadcaster Triple J either.

Could it be time for Latimer to move on and make way for someone who can help re-engage with the broadcaster’s audience? Could be.