An active and mixed year so far for Lippo group

This year is but young but it’s shaping up to be quite an exciting year of mixed fortunes for the Globe Media Group and its owners.

So far there has been layoffs across the board among the newspapers owned by the group that includes Jakarta Globe, Globe Asia, Investor daily, Suara Pembaruan and Campus Asia. Then there is the what some would describe as the dramatic departure of the Jakarta Globe news editor. That comes close to the decision of an expat editor not to renew his/her contract with the Jakarta Globe. There was also a bit of a flap over Jamsostek payments when journos in one of the discovered that the papers discovered that the finance department had been remiss in the promptness of their payments.

But then there has been good news for the group as well. Even in the midst of cutbacks the group managed to dig deep and foudn the money to acquire society magazine The Peak from Singapore Press Holdings and their Indonesian partners. Unspun‘s sources say that Jim Reed (very nice chap he is) will continue to be heading the mag’s editorial.

There was also some flap in the local papers based on a Washington Times story that James Riady had been granted entry into the US. That story spawned others in Fox News, Washington Post and Sydney Morning Herald but none of them seemed to make a dent on the Riady charm in continuously finding new investors and creditors.

On Tuesday The jakarta Globe reported that PT Matahari Putra Prima, the controlling shareholder of PT Matahari Department Store, for instance, had entered into a Rp 7.2 trillion strategic alliance with Luxembourg-based international private equity firm CVC Capital Partners to take over its shares in MDS; and today Seputar Indonesia reported that First Media has secured a loan facility of US$32 million from Falcon Private Bank Singapore.