Karl Stefanovic denies conduct oppressing his business partner after their relationship soured and has agreed to buy her out of their controversial podcast company.<\/p>\n
The long-time face of Nine’s flagship Today programme and joint owner of podcast company 123 Podcasts, Keshnee Ibrahim, have irreconcilable differences, a NSW Supreme Court hearing was told on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Ibrahim filed an urgent application for the court to defer a meeting scheduled for Friday, fearing she would be removed as a director of the company.<\/p>\n
Both she and Stefanovic own 45% stakes in the company that oversees The Karl Stefanovic Show.<\/p>\n
The short-lived podcast has been on hiatus since August 24, when its namesake interviewed Stefanovic interviewed a de-ageing expert.<\/p>\n
That came two months after his controversial interview with far-right figure Stephen Yaxley Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, triggered public backlash and Nine terminating his role as Today host.<\/p>\n
Stefanovic’s lawyer told the court on Tuesday the former TV host had agreed not to go ahead with Friday’s meeting and wanted the court to decide the issue of a buyout, as early as next week.<\/p>\n
Stefanovic agreed there had been an “irreconcilable breakdown” in the relationship and that a buyout of the shares was appropriate, lawyer Samuel Murray told the court.<\/p>\n
But he disagreed that the company was run in a way that was oppressive of Ibrahim’s interests, as she alleges.<\/p>\n
Stefanovic instructed Murray he wouldn’t be seeking a valuation for the shares in the company after August 7, from which time he argued Ibrahim had no economic interest in the continued running of the company.<\/p>\n
“The seventh of August date is important because seventh of August is before the majority of the conduct that’s complained about actually occurs,” Mr Murray said.<\/p>\n
At that time, Stefanovic was promoting an interview on his podcast with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, posting a picture of the Senator along with himself and his wife Jasmine, with the caption, “Luckiest girls in the world”.<\/p>\n
Shortly after, the channel fell silent.<\/p>\n
The show had garnered about 23 million views on YouTube.<\/p>\n
The parties had agreed to hire an independent valuer to determine what the company was worth and facilitate a buyout, Murray said.<\/p>\n
The former TV host agreed to hold the company meeting instead the following Friday, to which Justice David Hammerschlag objected.<\/p>\n
“That’s putting that’s that’s your client putting pressure on me, which is an invitation I’ll kindly decline,” Justice Hammerschlag said.<\/p>\n
“I’ll just stop the meeting until such time as the proceedings are resolved.”<\/p>\n
The matter has been set for a hearing on October 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Karl Stefanovic denies conduct oppressing his business partner after their relationship soured and has agreed to buy her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[85,156,1073,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-601630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-media","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}