Mounter

"Heatley read about Mounter’s appointment and did what he does—he reached for the phone. TVNZ might have been staid in many ways but it had access to taxpayers’ funds, longstanding viewer loyalty, a significant incumbency status and its government ownership could, Heatley thought, potentially work for or against Sky. He was worried that with a new, savvy chief executive on board, TVNZ could use its strengths to quash his and Jarvis’s start-up. In particular, the two companies were likely to be competitors for the rights to show popular products, especially live events."

"Heatley recollects that TVNZ and Todd Corp said they would put more money in, but in exchange they would require a share dilution of 1:3. In other words, for every share TVNZ and Todd had, they now wanted three. These terms reflected the company’s poor performance against the business plan that Heatley had promoted and, related to that, the company’s risk of failure now being greater than the investors had believed it to be when they signed up. Heatley was aghast at the dilution prospect. He had thought that he and the shareholders were close, but this was the difference between business and friendship. ‘I thought, Oh shit, would they really do that?’ There was no way he would agree to the proposal, but he understood why they were suggesting it. Before TVNZ had become a shareholder, Mounter had warned Heatley that Sky had underestimated the running costs and underestimated how much capital the business would need. Mounter had been right, Heatley had been wrong and the business was now at crisis point."