Update-Dow says no to Rupert Murdoch.

[AlCzervik]

Murdoch's News Corp. Bid for Dow Jones Rejected
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Made Unsolicited Bid for Dow Jones

By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
ABC NEWS Business Unit
May 1, 2007 —


Just hours after Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. made an unsolicited offer Tuesday to buy Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, the family that controls Dow Jones announced that it had rejected the bid.

The Bancroft family controls a little more than 50 percent of the votes at Dow Jones and announced after the stock market closed that it would reject the proposed bid.

The family did not comment on whether or not it would accept any other offer -- from Murdoch or somebody else. The family said only that it was rejecting the current bid.

Throughout the day, the possible sale of the nation's second-largest newspaper worried some.

News Corp. owns Fox News, the New York Post, TV Guide, MySpace and numerous other media outlets along with movie company 20th Century Fox.

The company offered to buy all outstanding Dow Jones stock for $60 a share -- or about $5 billion.

The proposed sale price is significantly higher than the market value of Dow Jones before the offer was made public.

Shares of the media company opened Tuesday morning at $37.12 and jumped to just above $57.28 before trading was temporarily halted. It closed at $56.20. The company had traded between $32 and $40 a share over the last year.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3105688