This is who bought The New Age and ANN7 property for R29.5m

From one television station to the next.

That's if a consortium that bought the offices of the once Gupta-owned The New Age newspaper and the ANN7 TV channel this week gets its way.

Pretoria businessman Nazeer Noormohamed and two others bought the Midrand property on auction on Wednesday for R29.5m, with that figure set to rise to R35m  with commission and VAT.

Noormohamed said they were starting a new TV channel.

“Obviously when you talk about TV, you are talking about big money … Now we have to decide what exactly the shareholding will be," he said.

Noormohamed said their goal now was to buy the defunct channel's TV equipment.

“If we run a TV channel with the existing infrastructure, that will be the first prize. But the fact is the building is facing the highway, so then came my instinct of property that said if worse comes to worst, we’ll rent it out.”

Noormohamed is the director of Nismedia and owner of Glow TV. He owns commercial and residential properties in Pretoria and has opened several community newspapers, including the Laudium Sun, which he has been running for about 20 years.

He is a former ANC councillor in Tshwane.

Another bidder now has 14 days to make a higher offer to buy the property - but the auctioneers would have to afford Noormohamed the chance to outbid them.

“It’s not a done deal. We will only know within 14 days,” said Noormohamed.

He said if someone else bought the building it would be expensive for them to remove the equipment - including video cameras, TV studios and cars - off the property. “Everything is there … It won’t be worth it for the person to move it.”

Auctioneer Clive Lazarus told IOL.co.za that only movable assets of the newspaper and the building were auctioned.

The building was owned by the liquidated Gupta-owned company Islandsite Investments 180.

Noormohamed claimed that ANN7 was still a tenant because it has not been liquidated.

City Press reported on September 17 last year that four days before the Guptas sold their media companies to former Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) head Mzwanele Manyi, the controversial family received a R600m offer from the Star Mega Investors Group Limited consortium.

Noormohamed and others created the consortium to buy the Gupta media companies. They offered the Guptas 70% of the asking price in cash and 30% in shares, which the Guptas had asked to be allocated to their employees and members of the public in an empowerment scheme.

But the Guptas instead chose to accept an offer from Manyi’s company, Lodidox, worth R450m.