Categories: OLD Media Moves

Other Dow Jones bidders unlikely

Leon Lazaroff of Bloomberg News writes that it’s unlikely that any other bidders for Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, will be able to top News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch‘s $5 billion bid for the company now that its controlling owners, the Bancrofts, have agreed to talk.

Lazaroff wrote, “The company may not get a higher offer than Murdoch’s, said Michael Chren, managing director of Allegiant Asset Management Co. in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The Allegiant Large Cap Value Fund had 436,000 Dow Jones shares at the end of April.

“‘It’s now an auction situation, and my sense is that Murdoch has them exactly where he wants them,’ Chren said. ‘No one else is coming to this party. It seems very likely we’re headed to a deal between News Corp. and Dow Jones.’

“Murdoch’s offer prices Dow Jones at almost double the valuation McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, put on Knight Ridder Inc. last year and that real estate billionaire Sam Zell is offering for Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times.”

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.