Rupert Murdoch merged News Corp. and Fox Corp. once. However, he decided to call the process off. He claimed that right now, the merger isn’t beneficial to the stockholders of the firms.
Mr. Murdoch recommended that News Corp. and Fox be reunited 10 years after they split up last fall. The boards of the two corporations said in statements released on Tuesday that they had received a letter from Murdoch backing off the decision.
Fox Corp. operates Fox News, the Fox broadcast network, local TV stations, and the Tubi streaming service. News Corp. owns Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal’s publisher, and other assets such as HarperCollins Publishers and news organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia.
Alternatives and Tradeoffs of The Forgone Transaction
News Corp. considers other strategic possibilities aside from a merger with Fox Corp. According to people familiar with the situation, the company is also selling its digital real estate assets. According to a securities disclosure, News Corp. said it is in discussions to sell Move Inc., which runs Realtor.com, and CoStar Group Inc. In addition, News Corp. owns a controlling interest in REA Group Ltd, an Australian digital real estate company.
Those familiar with Murdoch’s opinions on the benefits of combining Fox Corp. and News Corp. believe that the combined business would have had more financial strength to make purchases. Overall, it would have been stronger. According to them, the corporations may have teamed up in areas such as sports betting.
The planned deal received a lot of opposition from big investors. One of the major non-Murdoch shareholders of both News Corp. and Fox is Independent Franchise Partners, a London-based investing company. It argued against recombination in November, claiming that the merger wouldn’t yield News Corp.’s full worth.
The companies announced that special committees set up to examine the planned merger had been disbanded, including those of Fox Corp. and News Corp.
COMMENTS