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News Corp. acquires Dow Jones & Co.

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Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Dow Jones & Company was founded in 1882.

News Corporation has succeeded in purchasing the Dow Jones & Company, the 125-year-old financial information firm and publisher of The Wall Street Journal in a three month long US$5 billion takeover bid. Rupert Murdoch is the chairman and chief executive officer of News Corporation.

The Bancroft family, which owns 64.2% of the Dow Jones' voting power met Tuesday and finalized the deal amid opposition from some key members who were fearful that Journal's reputation and content would be altered. Last week, the board of the Dow Jones approved the sale, a $60-a-share bid which represents a 67% premium above Dow Jones's share price at the time of the offer. Yesterday, the News Corp. board gathered and gave the thumbs up for the acquisition, leaving only the Bancrofts to decide on the outcome.

Dow Jones, which also owns Barron's Magazine, has been owned by the Bancroft family since 1902.

Murdoch announced News Corporation's bid in May, and has maintained his company's position because of the lack of rivals. A Bancroft representative had approached other potential buyers, including billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who both declined.

To address concerns that the Journal will be negatively altered, Murdoch plans to add four new pages of coverage, and has agreed to form a committee to decide on hiring or firing any editors.

News Corp. owns and operates dozens of large media companies, including the Fox News and British Sky Broadcasting television networks, newspapers The New York Post, The Australian, and The Sun, magazines TV Guide and The Weekly Standard, as well as internet assets such as Myspace and Photobucket.

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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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