The final stage in the takeover of Ten Network by CBS will start on Tuesday with a court hearing for the transfer of the troubled-free-to-air broadcaster's shares to the US media giant.
The hearing, due to be held in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney, comes a week after the takeover received the green light from the Foreign Investment Review Board.
The $41 million CBS takeover bid trumped a competing offer from billionaire Ten shareholders Lachlan Murdoch and Bruce Gordon and was almost unanimously backed by Ten's creditors, including the broadcaster's employees, at a meeting in September.
The network slipped into administration after the pair, along with fellow shareholder James Packer, refused to back a new finance package following the expiry of a $200 million debt facility.
Mr Gordon failed with a court bid to derail the CBS deal, and withdrew from the fight in October when shareholders were given a deadline to oppose the application for the transfer of all of Ten's shares - which have been valued as worthless in an expert report - to CBS.
KPMG in October evaluated Ten's business to examine whether shareholders were disadvantaged by the CBS deal, in which the US broadcaster will pay nothing for Ten's shares.
The auditor described the company's shares as worthless, with the value of Ten's business operations outweighed by debts on its outstanding content contracts with CBS and Twentieth Century Fox.
It said Ten's business would need to have a net value of $646.9 million in order for its shares to have any value, well above the $112 million it was worth under the best-case scenario KPMG applied to its analysis.
If approved by the NSW Supreme Court, the transfer of Ten's shares to CBS will leave shareholders with nothing.
