Wolff: FT purchase between Bloomberg, Reuters

Michael Wolff writes for The Guardian newspaper in London that the acquisition of The Financial Times newspaper boils down to Bloomberg or Reuters, with News Corp. lurking in the background.

Wolff writes, “Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters are direct competitors, the leaders in selling financial and other business data, and each one would loathe to see the other get such a major financial brand. Indeed, part of their own shadow negotiation is an implicit assumption that one would get the FT, and the other the Wall Street Journal when Rupert Murdoch departs this veil of tears and his company’s love of newspapers ends.

“But News Corp’s recent decision to split the company into two, one focused on entertainment and the other on newspapers, might mean that the Murdoch papers, including the WSJ, could live on well after him – or at least be ensnared in a more long-term corporate fate.

“Hence, the competition for the FT has recently become much sharper between Bloomberg and Thomson.

“Curiously, the Scardino resistance almost seems like a sales strategy: move each of the two buyers ever closer, and then push them away. Most recently, Thomson has been the preferred buyer for what’s not been for sale, with Bloomberg less favored and, hence, more determined.

“Both companies are now so much in a dither of must-have anticipation that the FT could fetch the kind of premium price not seen since Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal in 2007. And that prospective price discounts Murdoch’s own interest, which it should not.”

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