The Business Online says it’s a done deal, and a formal announcement will come next week:
Rupert Murdoch has succeeded with his $5 billion bid for Dow Jones, owners of the Wall Street Journal, according to sources acting for the Dow Jones board. Negotiations have been completed and the board is confident the terms of the deal will be accepted by the Bancroft family, which controls a majority of voting shares in Dow Jones, over the next few days. A formal announcement is expected next week.
(…)
Under the terms of this agreement, News Corporation will have the ability to hire and fire the top editors and publishers (a matter on which Murdoch would not budge); but a nominally independent five-person committee will have the right of veto on these decisions.
Murdoch and Dow Jones will jointly agree the membership of this panel, which will have the power to choose its successors—a crucial concession to the Bancrofts who are sensitive to the claim that they are sacrificing the Journal’s editorial integrity by selling to Murdoch. The Bancrofts have received extensive legal advice in an attempt to satisfy themselves about the durability of the editorial safeguards.
The arrangement is a tougher version of the one put in place by the British government when Murdoch bought The Times and The Sunday Times in 1981. Murdoch will have less control over the independent directors at the Journal than he does at Times Newspapers, where they are regarded as weak and ineffectual. But one source, acting for the Bancrofts, admitted privately that the Dow independent panel was only a “fig leaf” to facilitate the sale and that over time Murdoch would get round it.
John Biffen, the Tory cabinet minister who signed off on 1981 deal to establish independent directors for Times Newspapers in London, has since conceded that the arrangement was also a “fig leaf” designed to allow the sale to proceed.
Of course, there are stories countering this claim, but laced with a 67% premium, this one had Sold written all over it. We’ll see what happens over the weekend…
Subscribe: