The appointment of Canadian Business journalist Peter Waal to vp investor relations at Lions Gate Entertainment is raising eyebrows amongst executives at CTV Network, Alliance Communications and Atlantis Communications.

Waal jumped directly to the new post at lge effective Aug. 24 from his position as senior writer at Canadian Business where he covered among other things, publicly traded Canadian entertainment companies. And although all are stopping short of accusing ulterior motives, Waal’s career move and the timing of controversial articles on Alliance Atlantis and ctv behind a positive lge profile in May is making for heated discussion.

The history starts with a Waal-penned spring Canadian Business profile of Lions Gate Entertainment and its president and ceo Frank Giustra, in which Waal quotes analysts and portfolio managers who were mostly bullish about the company’s future.

More recently, in the Aug. 28 issue of Canadian Business, Waal wrote a piece on what is now his employer’s competition – Alliance Atlantis – titled ‘Hold the Applause,’ which pondered why Robert Lantos had cashed out and questioned whether or not Atlantis ceo Michael MacMillan was up to the task of running the new entity.

To clarify, a Lions Gate spokesperson says an informal job offer was made to Waal on Aug. 7 and that the job was accepted by Waal on Aug. 12, by which point Waal says the article was filed and fact-checked.

Canadian Business editor Arthur Johnson also says that the aac article was filed before Waal got the job offer, although he was unwilling to give specific dates.

For his part, Waal scoffs at any suggestion of a conflict of interest and stands by his stories. ‘There was absolutely no impropriety, I can tell you that,’ he said.

As for the content of the Alliance Atlantis article, while Waal did cite Yorkton Securities analyst Roger Dent’s prediction that aac stock would hit $50 some time in the next 12 to 18 months, the gist of the piece was cautionary to investors thinking about buying into aac.

‘In the case of the Atlantis Alliance merger, what I said was what I was hearing from other analysts that I spoke to and from ceos that I spoke to,’ says Waal.

‘Nobody that I spoke to had a good thing to say about it.’

Atlantis executives refused to comment on the article, but outgoing Alliance senior vp corporate communications, Robert Pattillo, says he was ‘disappointed’ in Waal’s article and called his conclusions ‘mean-minded and unprofessional.’

‘No one in the industry shares these views and certainly I haven’t heard anything like this expressed by the financial community. They are very high on MacMillan and his team.’

Waal’s editor Johnson backs up the writer’s ability to use unnamed sources. ‘It’s probably my input as much as anybody else’s,’ says Johnson.

‘Analysts these days have a lot more conflicts than journalists do. So I encourage our writers to talk to a whole variety of people and at the end of the day to make their mind up.’

Fecan story

And while the timing of the aac piece is cause for speculation, other questions are present following Waal’s most recent piece in the Sept. 11 edition of Canadian Business on ctv president and ceo Ivan Fecan and his network’s rivalry with CanWest Global’s Izzy Asper.

Waal had accepted the Lions Gate job before he interviewed Fecan and told the Baton president and ceo as much.

But among the entertaining facts coming out last week in the midst of industry discussion over Waal’s appointment, was that lge had been looking at the possibility of buying into the CTV Network.

Although Frank Giustra, president and ceo of lge, refused comment on his interest in ctv or any of the other questions raised by Playback, a senior executive at ctv confirms Giustra was in-house at Channel Nine Court earlier last month expressing an interest in broadcasting and potential Baton investment in a meeting with Fecan.

‘But nothing came of those discussions,’ says the source, who requested anonymity.

When Johnson was asked about the potential for a conflict of interest in the ctv story, he replied, ‘If I’d known that for a fact I certainly would have thought about it. But there had been no such speculation at the time, and Peter was very candid with me that he was resigning and who he was working for.’

When the new information about Giustra’s alleged visit to ctv became known, Playback tried to contact Waal for comment, but he was unavailable, leaving the question of whether he was aware of Giustra’s interest in ctv when he wrote the Canadian Business article unanswered. A Lions Gate spokesperson said Waal was house hunting, in Vancouver.

Sources at both aac and ctv say they will be responding to Waal’s articles in Canadian Business, but in what fashion remains unclear.

‘Let’s just say it will be more than a letter,’ says one senior aac executive.

For the record, a spokesperson for the Ontario Securities Commission says the osc’s manager of investigations, Brian Butler, felt it appeared that no violations had occurred so far based on the information he had been given.