Dow Jones board supports sale to Murdoch

 The Board of Directors of the US media group Dow Jones has voted by a large majority in favor of selling its own company to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and is looking forward to a cooperation. It will support the original purchase offer of five billion dollars and recommend it to the shareholders for acceptance, as reported by SDA. This brings Murdoch closer to the takeover of the Dow Jones publishing house and thus the Wall Street Journal, which was already announced in May (see ) It now remains to be seen whether the Bancroft family will agree to this agreement. They hold a total of 64 percent of the voting rights in the publishing house and are anything but united; concerns have repeatedly been expressed within the family that a takeover of the Wall Street Journal by the arch-conservative Murdoch would damage the newspaper's reputation. Murdoch is often criticized for turning his private opinion into the opinion of his newspapers and television stations and for interfering in journalistic decisions. Many editors of the Wall Street Journal are therefore also against a takeover; at the end of June, around a third of journalists stayed away from work for a day in protest.
Murdoch's offer to buy the Dow Jones publishing house has been in place since the beginning of May, when he offered a 65% premium on the share price, which skyrocketed after the offer was announced. Today, Wednesday morning, the share price stood at 56.45 dollars, only slightly below Murdoch's May offer of 60 dollars per share.