Rupert Murdoch's $80B Time Warner bid rejected. TWX shares soar.

Time Warner (TWX) has rejected a reportedly $80 billion bid from Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox, Fox says. After the news was announced, Time Warner (TWX) shares rose by 16 percent while Fox starts to trickle down.

|
Josh Reynolds/AP/file
News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch speaks during a forum on The Economics and Politics of Immigration in Boston. Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox on Wednesday, July 16, 2014 said Time Warner has rejected an offer it made last month to combine the two media and entertainment giants.

Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox said Time Warner has rejected an offer it made last month to combine the two media entertainment giants.

Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. also said Wednesday in a brief statement that it is not currently in discussions with Time Warner. Shares of Time Warner jumped 16 percent to $83 Wednesday, while Twenty-First Century Fox had dipped by 2 percent to about $34.50.

The New York Times reported that the June bid totaled $80 billion, or $85 in stock and cash for each Time Warner Inc. share. The report cited anonymous sources and said Twenty-First Century Fox would have sold CNN as part of the deal to avoid anti-trust concerns. Its Fox News competes directly with the news network.

The Times also said that Murdoch is determined to make a deal.

That price amounted to a 25 premium to Time Warner's stock price at the time. The Times said Time Warner's board discussed the offer at length and then rejected it, stating that the company was better off remaining independent.

A Time Warner representative did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press seeking comment. The New York company's holdings include the cable movie channel HBO and Warner Bros. studios.

Murdoch has been adding on to his media empire during his 50-year career. He inherited several regional and local Australian newspapers from his father. Murdoch went on to found and head global media conglomerate News Corporation, which bought several newspapers including the UK's News of the World and the Wall Street Journal. In 1986, he created Fox Broadcasting

However, Murdoch's career has also been marked by controversy. In 2011, he faced allegations that his companies, including News of the World, hacked phone calls of celebrities, royal family members, and others, including Milly Dowler, a British teenager who was murdered in 2002. The Guardian reported that News of the World reporters had hacked into Ms. Dowler's voicemail while she was still missing and deleted some of the voicemails – and potential evidence – that misled people to believe she was still alive. The case later led to News of the World shutting down and several investigations about British media's tactics and ethics. 

In February, Comcast proposed to acquire Time Warner Cable, which is split from Time Warner. The possible merger is currently being reviewed by the Federal Communications Commission and the US Department of Justice.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Rupert Murdoch's $80B Time Warner bid rejected. TWX shares soar.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0716/Rupert-Murdoch-s-80B-Time-Warner-bid-rejected.-TWX-shares-soar
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe