New York – Media baron Rupert Murdoch cleared another hurdle on his way to owning The Wall Street Journal late Tuesday when the board of Dow Jones & Co., the Journal’s parent company, said it would sign off on a sale to Murdoch’s News Corp. for $5 billion.
Dow Jones said in a statement that its board was prepared to recommend a proposal for News Corp. to acquire Dow Jones for $60 per share, the price Murdoch has proposed.
However the deal has yet to overcome its largest obstacle – approval by the mercurial Bancroft family, Dow Jones’ controlling shareholders. The family initially rebuffed Murdoch’s offer in early May, only to reconsider.
The family has controlled the storied newspaper publisher for more than a century and views it as a public trust. They insisted on, and received, a commitment to create an oversight board that must approve the hiring or firing of top editors at the Journal.
With board approval now cleared, the deal will next be presented to family members, most likely Monday, and they will have several days to consider it. The family, which controls 64 percent of the shareholder vote and has three dozen adult members spread across the country, has been deeply divided over whether to sell to Murdoch.
Last week, Dow Jones negotiators met with supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle and Web entrepreneur Brad Greenspan to explore a possible counteroffer to Murdoch, but so far no concrete offer has emerged.
Earlier, General Electric and Pearson PLC abandoned exploratory talks to combine GE’s CNBC channel with Dow Jones and Pearson’s Financial Times newspaper. Many on Wall Street believe Murdoch’s $5 billion offer is too high to be beat.
Murdoch has said concerns he would meddle with the Journal’s coverage are unwarranted. He has been mainly silent about how the process is going, but expressed frustration about the drawn-out negotiations.
