BizJournals Portfolio
Jul 31 2007 12:00am EDT

Rupert Murdoch, Victorious

It's finally happened: News Corp has enough Bancroft votes that it's going to go ahead with its acquisition of Dow Jones. By the fourth quarter, Rupert Murdoch will be the new proprietor of the Wall Street Journal.

The key capitulation came from Denver trusts controlling 9.1% of Dow Jones votes. They'd been holding out for a premium over the non-voting shares, but when it became obvious that neither Dow Jones nor News Corp was willing to play that game, they voted at least some of their shares in favor. Now the deal is done.

I'm actually mildly disappointed that the Denver trusts didn't stick to their guns, and call Murdoch's bluff. But I'm not unhappy that Rupert is going to own the WSJ. I think he'll invest in it and make it a better paper than it is today, and I look forward to its evolution in the years to come.


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