News Corp-Dow Jones: Hope Yet For Rupert

The unions hate

it. The owners are going to vote

against it. The New York Observer says that it’s sunk.

So is there any hope for Rupert Murdoch in his bid to buy Dow

Jones?

In a word, yes: and a lot of the reason is in the stock price. The Bancrofts

allowed Murdoch’s bid to get this far, rather than dismissing it out of hand,

as they’ve done with any number of bids in the past. Murdoch himself described

the bid as "friendly". So the Bancrofts look as though they’re holding

out for a higher sum, rather than simply refusing.

What’s more, the Bancrofts, as controlling shareholders, do actually have a

fiduciary duty to the non-controlling shareholders, as Gary Lutin

notes here.

If the company turns out not to be for sale and the share price collapses back

to where it was pre-bid, there’s going to be a lot of very unhappy shareholders

that the Bancrofts will have to answer to.

Finally, there’s almost certain to be a bidding war, now that Dow Jones is

in play. If anything, the problem is that there aren’t going to be enough investment

banks to advise all the possible suitors – which range from the Washington

Post and the New York Times through Pearson and Reuters to GE and even Yahoo.

Not to mention the occasional billionaire with a yen for a trophy publication

or any number of private-equity shops for whom $5 billion or $6 billion is the

kind of money you find down the back of the sofa on a Sunday afternoon.

I just can’t see a situation wherein the Bancrofts retain control of the company

and the Journal, as IAPE 1096 would like. This still looks very much like the

beginning of the end of their days as media magnates. And if they’re going to

sell anyway, there are definitely pretty

good reasons to sell to Rupert.

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