Newsday wind up approved by High Court

DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

A move to wind up the News­day news­pa­per af­ter 32 years of op­er­a­tion has been ap­proved.

Dur­ing a hear­ing a short while ago, High Court Judge Maris­sa Robert­son ap­proved an ap­pli­ca­tion made late last year by lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Dai­ly News Ltd, the par­ent com­pa­ny of the news­pa­per.

In ap­prov­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion, Jus­tice Robert­son ap­point­ed char­tered fi­nan­cial an­a­lyst Maria Daniel as liq­uida­tor.

Daniel will now take con­trol of the com­pa­ny and as­sess and sell its as­sets in or­der to clear its debts to cred­i­tors.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­ney Gre­go­ry Pan­tin said there were no ob­jec­tions to the ap­pli­ca­tion af­ter it was ad­ver­tised in for­mer ri­val news­pa­pers and in the Gazette.

The pe­ti­tion was filed on De­cem­ber 31 last year, with the com­pa­ny cit­ing fi­nan­cial is­sues caused by steadi­ly de­clin­ing ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue and the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The de­ci­sion was on­ly re­vealed by the com­pa­ny on Jan­u­ary 9 this year, when it pub­lished the last phys­i­cal edi­tion of the news­pa­per, which was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber 1993.

The news­pa­per has con­tin­ued to pub­lish dig­i­tal­ly while the wind­ing-up pro­ce­dure was pend­ing.

How­ev­er, Daniel will now have to de­ter­mine whether those op­er­a­tions will con­tin­ue as she be­gins the liq­ui­da­tion process.

The com­pa­ny is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Miguel Vasquez of Hamel-Smith and Com­pa­ny.