Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz’s media ventures are burning millions

Chatter in media circles over a possible sale of Australian Community Media went into overdrive last month. All it took was for news to break that the regional newspaper group’s then-chairman and former Domain chief executive Antony Catalano had been charged with assaulting a woman.

Over the preceding year, as CBD has previously reported, media executives said they had been sounded out about their possible interest in scooping up ACM’s publishing assets, including The Canberra Times, The Newcastle Herald and the Illawarra Mercury, among other mastheads.

There were clearly no takers. And now we’ve got a better understanding of why.

Fresh documents filed with the corporate regulator show that 20 Cashews, the holding group that Catalano and the wealthy Melbourne stockpicker Alex Waislitz use to control their interests in ACM and their upstart property platform, View Media, deepened its losses to $7.9 million in the 2025 financial year.

Things weren’t much better for the pair the previous year. In 2024, the company recorded a $2.5 million loss. When ACM’s managing director Tony Kendall fronted staff at a town hall days after Catalano’s charges had been reported in the press, he said ACM was not up for sale, and that the alleged actions of the company’s executive chairman wouldn’t force it into one.

But one of the key questions in all of this is where Waislitz stands. He and Catalano bought ACM from Nine Entertainment, publisher of this masthead, for more than $125 million in 2019. The ownership of 20 Cashews is held through multiple entities related to Waislitz and Catalano, and works out at a 50-50 split between the pair.

Catalano, a fast-talking media guy with a love for real estate, has long positioned himself as the strategic half of the duo. The big ideas guy, the salesman … now in rehab. Waislitz, meanwhile, has often been cast as the walking piggy bank. So what’s in it for him?

After all, we can’t imagine The Canberra Times and Co being suitable outlets for Waislitz to launder publicity for his own ventures and the fledgling singing career of his fiancee, Rebekah Behbahani, who also has her own reality show, Behind Behani.

She and Waislitz, who appears in various episodes, are executive producers of the show. Add to that list her own record label, Stormness Records, named after the daughter she shares with Waislitz. It looks like the Melbourne billionaire has other things on his mind.

When asked about 20 Cashews’ accounts, a spokesman said the financial results reflected a number of factors including but not limited to a restructure of the ACM publication portfolio, market conditions, and equity-accounted losses associated with “adjacent business investments” such as View Media.

But the spokesman stopped short of addressing whether Waislitz would entertain buyer interest.

“ACM’s mastheads have a long and proud history of being the trusted voice in keeping our communities strong, informed and connected,” the spokesman told CBD. “That will not change.”

Over at View Media, the property portal that Catalano and Waislitz founded to challenge Domain and REA Group’s realestate.com.au, things look uncertain.

ANZ invested about $50 million in the venture in 2023 in return for a 20 per cent stake. Seven West Media, before it was swallowed by Southern Cross Austereo, made a majority non-cash investment of about $36 million a year earlier, in return for its own 20 per cent stake. But late last year, ANZ and Seven wrote down their stakes by millions.

And without Catalano around to rattle the tin, we wouldn’t blame Waislitz for pushing to put one or some or all of his media assets on the block.

John Howard didn’t hear about the book about him before publication

Where it All Went Wrong, the book on former prime minister John Howard by Amy Remeikis, a former journalist at The Guardian and this masthead, caused a stir in media circles earlier this week, after the Australian Book Review published a scathing review by the academic Dominic Kelly.

In it, Kelly tore into Remeikis for her writing style and suggested she misunderstood important political context. He also itemised a string of “factual errors”, including a howler of a typo that claimed Howard won an election in 1999 that never occurred. (He won in 1998.)

Now it turns out Howard didn’t hear from Remeikis ahead of publication.

“This book, I didn’t know it existed,” Howard said when reached by CBD on Thursday morning. “I may have read of its existence, but I’ve certainly not read it. And I do not recall being consulted by the author during its compilation.” He said he had nothing further to say.

Look, we haven’t read it either and, as a result, are in no position to pass judgement on the contents of the book, as regular readers will no doubt recall us disclosing yesterday.

But we were baffled by Remeikis’ decision not to approach Howard prior to publication. As with most forms of journalism, it’s common practice to approach the subject of a story ahead of publication, even if only as a courtesy.

So why didn’t Remeikis? When reached on Thursday, Remeikis rejected the suggestion that her book, which she describes as a polemic on the former prime minister, warranted the approach. It was all on the public record, she said, and therefore fair game. Fair enough.

But perhaps if she had, Howard would’ve helped her catch the supposed errors.

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