Matt Stanton is not a household name. But the grey-haired, 55-year-old last month became one of the most influential executives in the country, after being catapulted into running Australia’s largest media organisation, Nine Entertainment Company, which delivers news and current affairs, sport and entertainment to 10 million households daily.

Stanton’s appointment as Nine’s acting chief executive has been met with mixed reviews. However, no one is more surprised than Stanton to find himself in that job. And that’s because a little over two years ago a handful of surgeons told Stanton he might die, and it was time to say goodbye to his wife and three sons.

In June 2022, Stanton, had woken up with a massive pain in his left leg. The calm, genial Englishman made a visit to Sydney’s Northern Beaches Hospital, and from there it was a blur. He was rushed into intensive care, where he would spend three weeks, including being placed into a coma, after his family was told he had sepsis. A bristle from a barbecue wire brush had perforated his liver, causing an infection that would poison his blood and spread throughout his body.

Surgeons had to remove the bristle otherwise Stanton would die, but there was a 50 per cent chance he wouldn’t make it through the operation. He survived, having lost one third of his body weight, only to be informed he would be an invalid, requiring a wheelchair. Stanton was told he would never walk again because of the damage caused by the sepsis to his left leg.

Just before that near-death experience Stanton had agreed to become Nine’s chief strategy officer. It was supposed to be a return to the media sector for Stanton, who had spent three decades working across the beverage and media industries in Britain and Australia. Before Nine’s job offer, Stanton had been chief executive of a private-equity owned dairy company, called Barambah Organics, which owned a few farms. Back then he was fielding questions about its prize-winning milk, and making anodyne remarks that “studies show happy cows produce more delicious milk”.

When Stanton informed Nine of his health scare he expected the offer to be rescinded. It wasn’t. Within a few months Stanton was walking, with a left leg that still experiences numbness, and working at the media group.

For some, a crisis changes how they live their life, forcing them onto another path but, according to those close to Stanton, who tell this story – Stanton declined to be interviewed – it reinvigorated and excited him. It also made him less afraid to take some hits. After his elevation to Nine’s acting chief executive role, some punches were already being thrown.

The rapid ascent for Stanton to the top of Nine puts him into the most complex and challenging role of his career. The assets for which he’s now ultimately responsible have a broad impact on the national public conversation and society, and play an important role in democracy, at a time when misinformation, hate speech and extremist propaganda are being spread online and via social media. Those assets include Nine’s national television network, radio stations 2GB and 3AW, The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Age.

Stanton has the full confidence of Melbourne merchant banker John Wylie. He is the founder of Tanarra, an asset management group, which was an investor in Barambah, the dairy organisation that recruited Stanton as its chief executive a few years ago. “He did a good job for us,” recalls Wylie. “He grew the top line, innovated with new products. He’s someone who understands a consumer-facing business. He’s good with people, he cares about people. He’ll be deeply affected by what’s going on at Nine at the moment.”

Stanton’s long career also included working at Woolworths for 15 months in a business transformation role. A former colleague from that time also speaks highly of him. “Transformation was what Woolworths needed at the time, but how you apply that big title to a whole bunch of very practical problems is always interesting. Matt made good sense of it, he did good work and was well liked.”

Still, not everyone agrees Stanton is the best candidate to lead Nine. “Matt is a decent person. He doesn’t play games. He’ll work very hard. But he’s not going to knock the socks off a media buyer,” said a former media industry executive, who asked not to be named. “They [the board] should be looking for someone stronger. The one thing Nine needs is leadership.”

Stanton’s main rival for the Nine role is said to be Amanda Laing, Foxtel’s former chief commercial and content officer. The Nine board is keeping tight-lipped on the CEO recruitment process. For now, Stanton’s in the job and if the reality of it hasn’t sunk in yet, it will by Thursday when he confronts what’s expected to be a heated annual general meeting with Nine shareholders.

Those shareholders are upset about the management and board turmoil that has engulfed Nine for the past six months, and also about the company’s poor share price performance.

In June, former federal treasurer Peter Costello quit as the media group’s long-serving chairman, after he apparently lost his cool and knocked over a photojournalist from The Australian, who was trying to interview him. Then in September, Mike Sneesby, Nine’s chief executive of three-and-a-half years, who had hired Stanton, followed Costello out the door.

Sneesby was credited with building Stan, Nine’s successful streaming service, and also securing a $350 million broadcast rights deal to televise multiple Olympics through to Brisbane in 2032. However, many of his peers and colleagues also described him as an indecisive leader, who could be elusive and wary of journalists. Management under his reign struggled to contain costs and stem the advertising losses the group was experiencing during a sharp economic downturn. During Sneesby’s time, Nine’s market capitalisation more than halved, wiping billions from its value.

After the departure of Costello and Sneesby, the board and management released an independent review of the company’s workplace culture in October, following multiple internal complaints. The review was triggered by the abrupt exit in March of former television news and current affairs director Darren Wick. Three women later came forward to accuse him of alleged drunken and lecherous behaviour over more than a decade, which was said to be “an open secret” within the company.

The report conducted by independent consultants Intersection into Nine’s culture was damning. It found a toxic environment where, largely in the television news and current affairs division, there was systemic abuse of power and authority, bullying and sexual harassment. Surveys revealed problems existed across the organisation that employs 5000 staff. It was Nine’s #MeToo moment, or as some dubbed it, #NineToo.

“For this report to be necessary in the first place was itself a reflection of poor management,” said Helen Bird, a corporate governance specialist, who is a senior lecturer in law at Swinburne University. Bird also sits on a corporate governance panel for companies’ regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Bird said in the current financial year Nine’s board should consider cutting executive remuneration. “It ought to be the case that the bonuses of all the executives be curbed very significantly. There’s nothing like regulation of the hip pocket to drive better change.”

Into the mess of repairing Nine’s cultural damage, stepped Stanton, and also Catherine West, who was Nine’s new chair. Together, they faced staff and apologised for the report’s findings and said further investigations and changes would occur. But the lack of immediate detail about an action plan drew swift and sometimes hostile criticism and frustration from employees because of questions that were not answered.

West, 55, has served on Nine’s board for eight years. She’s a former director of legal, commercial content and joint ventures for Sky plc, and also currently the chair of the National Institute for Dramatic Art, and a director of ASX-listed companies Peter Warren Automotive and Monash IVF.

At Nine’s annual general meeting, West is putting herself up for re-election for another three-year term, as is fellow director Andrew Lancaster, the chief executive of regional broadcaster WIN Corporation. Lancaster represents Nine’s biggest shareholder, which is nonagenarian billionaire Bruce Gordon, who owns WIN. Gordon’s investment company Birketu, owns 14.95 per cent of Nine, while a further 10 per cent stake is held through investment bank Macquarie in the form of cash-settled equity swaps.

If West is re-elected and stays until the end of that three-year term, it would take her tenure on the Nine board to 11 years, well beyond the nine years that corporate governance experts state is best practice. BHP’s chair Ken MacKenzie is expected to step down after nine years leading one of the nation’s biggest companies.

In the current environment, West, who’s described as sharp and determined, provides stability to Nine’s board, which has been welcomed by institutional investors. The board is currently recruiting more directors and, despite West and Lancaster’s presence, some in their ASX-director peer group believe the board needs more heavy-hitter directors and more media and business transformation experience.

In her time on the board, West was also chair of the people and remuneration committee, from which she stepped down in June. One of the responsibilities of that committee is workplace health and safety. “Part of the role of the chair of that committee [at any company] is to ensure that you’re getting under the bonnet of what’s going on in the culture of the organisation, and you do that on behalf of the board,” explained one ASX company director. This masthead is not suggesting that West did not fulfil her duties as chair of that committee.

Having faced a grilling from staff, Stanton and West will be bracing for another round of sharp and pointed questions at the company’s annual meeting that will be held at the media group’s North Sydney headquarters. Some types of questions expected at that meeting are:

How will they change Nine’s culture? Why didn’t they know of some of the toxic workplace issues? When will the board decide whether Stanton has the CEO job or not? What’s the strategy to grow the media group? What’s the response to pressure from some of Nine’s big shareholders, who are openly discussing breaking-up the company?

Stanton and West declined requests to be interviewed.

In 2018, Nine Entertainment Company was formed in a $4 billion deal, which merged the television assets of Nine with the publishing and property assets of Fairfax, which included a 60 per cent stake in the Domain group.

At the time, it was hailed as a deal where the media assets of each group could complement the other, synergies would be found, costs would be reduced and growth supercharged. The scale of a combined Nine and Fairfax would ensure the group was better placed to fight the intense competition from social media, streaming and other technology companies, which have hoovered up advertising revenues and also eyeballs for news, sport and entertainment, from traditional media.

Now only six years later, some of Nine’s institutional shareholders are privately arguing that there’s greater value in splitting up the company, adding to the mounting challenges confronting West and Stanton, or whoever permanently becomes Nine’s next CEO.

“I don’t think this new board would stand in the way of creating value by breaking up the company,” said one of Nine’s institutional shareholders, who would only speak on the condition of anonymity. “You’ve got a combination of some great assets, some challenged assets, priced at massively below what the underlying businesses are worth in an environment where there is a wall of corporate activity and private equity money. It’s not rocket science to figure out how to break this company up.”

Except any such break-up would require the approval of Bruce Gordon, and it’s understood that Nine’s management have no plans to pull apart the business.

Still, Nine’s sharemarket valuation is sitting at around $1.83 billion, which is much less than the sum value of its individual businesses. For example, Nine’s 60 per cent stake in property group Domain is worth $1.1 billion. Stan is valued between $600 million to $1 billion, by stockbroking analysts. A similar valuation has been made of Nine’s television and radio division, while the publishing arm is estimated to be worth between $500 million and $850 million. In more management upheaval, Domain’s chief executive Jason Pellegrino announced last month that he would leave that group after six years in the job.

The main drag on Nine’s share price, and its earnings, has been the recession in the advertising market, which is linked to consumer and economic confidence. When the economic cycle turns, in theory, Nine’s shares and its businesses should perform better.

Until then, Nine’s management under Stanton will continue to take out a further $50 million in costs from the company this year, after ripping out a similar amount last financial year. And they will be focused on growing subscriptions in its publishing division and driving further integration among Nine’s different business arms.

Cost-cutting has been a feature of many of Stanton’s prior roles. Indeed, he’s been described by one former colleague as a “sledgehammer” when it comes to finding savings.

Another former associate of Stanton, who worked with him at the magazine group that was then known as Bauer, said he and his team had made blunt top down cuts at that company, rather than getting in the weeds and talking to the leaders who ran the products to make smarter savings. “If you’re making cuts that are making it more challenging for the audience, then you’re actually cutting off your legs as a media company.”

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Stanton helped sell the magazine group, known as Australian Consolidated Press, to Bauer for $525 million, and then ran it.

“I was really surprised when I saw Matt was acting CEO at Nine,” said the former Bauer associate. “He’s a decent human being, but that’s different to being a really great CEO that needs to get what should be a really good business, in a very challenged sector, back to its best.”

Stanton has time to prove that he is the best candidate to be Nine’s CEO. He’s stepped into the breach at a difficult time, and how he performs over the next few months will determine if he gets the job. Stanton’s faced bigger challenges.

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