Stefanovic to buy out podcast partner after 'irreconcilable breakdown'

Karl Stefanovic walked into the New South Wales Supreme Court on Tuesday facing a question that has become increasingly common in the digital media age: how do you untangle a business partnership that has simply stopped working? The former Today host and his co-owner, Keshnee Ibrahim, each hold 45 percent stakes in 123 Podcast, the company behind The Karl Stefanovic Show. But the relationship between them has fractured beyond repair, and now a judge must decide how to divide what remains.

The breakdown traces back to August, when Stefanovic's podcast went silent. The immediate trigger was an interview with a de-aging expert on August 24, but the real rupture came two months earlier when Stefanovic sat down with Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon. That conversation sparked public outrage and cost Stefanovic his job at Nine, where he had been the face of the Today program for years. The podcast, which has accumulated roughly 23 million views on YouTube, has remained on hiatus ever since.

Ibrahim, 36, moved first. On Monday she filed an urgent application asking the court to postpone a scheduled September 18 meeting, fearing she would be removed as a director. Stefanovic's legal team, represented by Samuel Murray, acknowledged the relationship was beyond salvaging. But they disagreed sharply on how to characterize what had happened. While Ibrahim alleged the company had been run in a way that oppressed her interests, Stefanovic's side pushed back on that framing, even as they conceded the partnership itself was finished.

Justice David Hammerschlag laid out the arithmetic. Either the company could be wound up with a court-appointed liquidator determining its value and dividing the proceeds equally, or Stefanovic could simply buy out Ibrahim's stake. The judge seemed to lean toward the buyout path. "Then the question just becomes – what's the value for the buyout?" he asked from the bench. The answer to that question, though, hinges on a detail that may seem small but carries real money: the date of August 7.

Stefanovic's team argued the company should be valued as it stood on August 7, before what they described as the majority of the disputed conduct took place. On that date, Stefanovic was still promoting an interview with Pauline Hanson, the One Nation leader, posting a photo of himself, his wife Jasmine, and the senator with the caption "Luckiest girls in the world." The logic was straightforward: if you value the company before the Tommy Robinson fallout and the subsequent hiatus, you get a cleaner picture of what the business was actually worth. But Hammerschlag said he couldn't rule on that timing question yet. He ordered both sides to agree on an independent valuer and submit competing valuations to his chambers.

After a brief recess, the two sides had settled on a third party to conduct the assessment. Hammerschlag set the next hearing for October 13, giving the valuer time to work. "There's going to be a buyout," the judge said plainly. "So the question's become, what effect, if any, would the alleged oppression have on the value." He added a note that carried the weight of someone who has seen enough of these disputes: "This is obviously something that, if it can be settled, it should be settled."

What happens next depends on numbers that don't yet exist. The valuer will determine what 123 Podcast is worth, and Stefanovic will pay Ibrahim for her half. The podcast itself remains dark. Whether it ever returns to air, and under what circumstances, remains an open question. For now, the only certainty is that one of Australian media's most recognizable figures is about to buy his way out of a partnership that once seemed promising and has become, in the language of the court, irreconcilable.