1. News Corp is offering $5 billion ($60 per share) for Dow Jones the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, a potential crown jewel for News Corp and blend its assets with a worldwide empire of 170 newspapers, the Fox News network and 20th Century Fox studio. News Corp. would help grow circulation by investing more and expanding WSJ's coverage and sees the potential of tremendous economies of scale putting the news organizations together. The offer is 65 percent above Dow Jones's closing price on April 30 and about 17 times Dow Jones' 2007 profit, and may preclude a lot of competing bids.
[Dow Jones also publishes the wsj.com web site, Dow Jones Newswires, Barron's, several leading market indicators including the Dow Jones industrial average, and a group of community newspapers. Dow Jones is not a newspaper but a financial electronic collection and dissemination system of news.]
2. It is formulating a new cable business news channel (the Fox business channel to commence by the end of this year) as a rival to and more favorable to companies and executives than CNBC (which is owned by General Electric) and Bloomberg Television
3. It is expanding its lucrative MySpace social-networking property.
[Dow Jones is controlled by the Bancroft family through a special class of shares and cannot be taken over without the family's consent. Bancroft family members who control about 64 percent of the company's voting shares have rejected the offer.]
Sometimes the clear arithmetic of the price needs to fuzzied by the vectors of burning desire.
[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]
[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]
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