Fierce lobbying among Bancroft factions

Dennis Berman and Sarah Ellison of The Wall Street Journal write in a second story Wednesday that there has been serious lobbying within the Bancroft family that controls parent company Dow Jones & Co. about whether to support or reject the $5 billion offer from News Corp.

They wrote, “Even so, a company statement late yesterday said that a director who represents the Bancroft family, Michael B. Elefante, had told the Dow Jones board that family members and trusts ‘constituting slightly more than 50% of the outstanding voting power’ of Dow Jones would vote against that offer.

“Four days earlier, a preliminary family tally had showed that less than half of their voting shares opposed a transaction, according to a person close to Dow Jones’s board.

“It is unclear what happened in those intervening days, but it is likely there was fierce lobbying between the factions.

“Whether yesterday’s rebuff was a firm ‘no’ to Mr. Murdoch or simply a tactic to extract a higher offer also is unclear. ‘That’s exactly what we’re trying to figure out,’ said a person in Mr. Murdoch’s camp.”

Read more here. After being scooped on the story by CNBC on Tuesday, The Journal has come out Wednesday with all guns blazing.