Front row seat for Kirk

Former Fairfax boss and All Black great David Kirk is the newly appointed executive chairman of the Pacific Equity Partners-owned Hoyts cinema group. The move, which will also see Kirk invest his own money in Hoyts, confirms that his immediate future will be in Australia and not in his native New Zealand. Kirk said a key reason for joining Hoyts was that cinema represented a largely recession-proof business – a view borne out by statistics. But he denied suggestions that he was moving to an “old media” company, after spending much of his time at Fairfax trying to transform it into a “new media” group. “I see strong opportunities – which I won’t be revealing today – in the core cinema exhibition business that are partly tied up with the digitisation of movies which is on the way.” In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald Kirk says he’s the first to admit there is some attraction to less scrutiny in a private company. “You just don’t have public company reporting requirements but basically the running of the business.”