Dennis Berman and Jeffrey McCracken of The Wall Street Journal report that the paper’s parent company, News Corp., is shopping its index business, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Berman and McCracken report, “The move shows that News Corp., which purchased the publisher in late 2007 for $5.7 billion, is willing to shuffle its Dow Jones assets. The $5.7 billion deal proved to be struck at a market top, with News Corp. writing down $2.8 billion of the value of Dow Jones this year.
“A Dow Jones spokeswoman declined to comment. A News Corporation spokeswoman declined to comment. A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment.
“The indexes business — which creates and licenses indexes for use on mutual funds, exchanged-traded funds and other products — is a relatively stable and profitable unit for Dow Jones amid a period of steep revenue decline in its core newspaper franchise. For the nine months ending Sept. 2007, the last period reported by the then-independent company, the index unit posted revenues of $101 million.”
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