Montgomery Burns offer

14 May 2007 By Rob Cox Follow @rob1cox

Why not offer a really fat premium to the supervoting shareholders, while keeping the bid for ordinary shares flat? The promise of a News Corp board seat, WSJ independence and extra investment, might be enough to clinch the support of the Bancroft family.

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Rupert Murdoch on May 11 sent a letter to members of the Bancroft family attempting to sway them to accept News Corp.'s $5bn offer for Dow Jones & Co.

The letter offers the family a number of incentives towards accepting the bid, including a board seat on News Corp's board, an independent editorial board for its flagship Wall Street Journal, and guarantees to broadly increase investment.

Murdoch pledges to commit to continue to promote journalistic integrity, at Dow Jones and in the world, by establishing an independent, autonomous editorial board exactly along the lines of what was established at The Times of London.

He goes on to write that he would promote a member of the Bancroft family to the News Corp. board with the hope that including a family member on the Board would help alleviate any concerns about maintaining journalistic integrity and ensure good communication between the family and News Corporation going forward.

The letter also alluded to heavy product investment, stating that News Corp. would leverage its significant global resources and platforms to drive international growth and expansion of the Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal brands.

The letter did not mention a possible increase in the bid amount, but closed by requesting that Murdoch have the opportunity to meet with the Bancrofts and family representatives.

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