Categories: OLD Media Moves

Dow Jones shareholders approve deal

Sarah Ellison of The Wall Street Journal reports Thursday that more than 60 percent of Dow Jones & Co. shareholders have approved selling the parent of The Journal, Barron’s and Marketwatch to News Corp.

Ellison wrote, “At the conclusion of a half-hour meeting at a Manhattan hotel, Dow Jones’s general counsel Joe Stern said shareholders holding 60.27% of Dow Jones’s voting stock had approved the sale.

“The margin of approval was higher among shareholders owning common stock than shareholders holding supervoting stock. Roughly 78% of the outstanding common shares voted in favor of the deal while only 54% of the outstanding supervoting shares approved the deal.

“Most of the supervoting stock is held by members of the Bancroft family, which has controlled Dow Jones for more than a century. The family was heavily divided on whether to sell to News Corp.”

Read more here.

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.