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Media

MySpace Founder Makes An Offer for Dow Jones; Board Takes Over Negotiations

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The entire process to buy Dow Jones (DJ) has been strange one.  In fact, it has been more than strange and just got even stranger.  The reports are that the board of directors is taking over the buyout negotiations from the controlling Bankcroft family.  The founder of MySpace’s parent Intermix Media, Brad Greenspan, has apparently made a rival $60.00 offer yesterday for the Dow Jones (DJ) company.

News Corp. bought MySpace via the Intermix acquisition in a deal that was a head scratcher at first that become one of the best Internet buys ever.  Interestingly enough, Greenspan had sued (and lost) News Corp. after the buyout over censorship and anti-competitive behavior. 

In a statement out of the company, the Board of Directors and representatives of the Bancroft family will conduct further discussions with News Corp. relating to the proposal and will oversee the exploration of strategic alternatives. Representatives of the Bancroft family, which owns shares representing a majority of the Company’s voting power, reiterated that any transaction must include appropriate provisions with respect to journalistic and editorial independence and integrity. Any acquisition will require the approval of the Board of Directors and shareholders owning a majority of the Company’s voting power.

Shares of Dow Jones closed up 3.2% on the day at $60.65.

Jon C. Ogg
June 20, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in any of the companies he covers.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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