Activist hedge fund wants WSJ parent to split up

Activist hedge fund Starboard Value is seeking a split of News Corp., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and MarketWatch.com, reports Patrick Temple-West, Anna Nicolaou and Ortenca Aliaj of The Financial Times.

Temple-West, Nicolaou and Aliaj report, “News Corp shares are up 20 per cent this year, outperforming the broader US market and giving the group a valuation of $12.6bn. Its shares have climbed 5 per cent since Friday when Reuters reported that Starboard was taking on the Murdochs. The hedge fund has not disclosed the size of its stake in News Corp.

“A News Corp spokesman said it was engaged with investors and committed to driving shareholder value. ‘We remain focused on executing our strategic plan, which has helped us set records in profitability over the past three years. We are proud of our rapid digital transformation and bright prospects for long-term growth and value creation,’ he said.

“Investors have long complained that the stock market values News Corp at less than the sum of its parts — which include newspapers on three continents, financial information group Dow Jones, book publisher HarperCollins and a majority stake in Australian property listings group REA.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.