News Corp puts Dow Jones index business up for sale
The Wall Street Journal, which is also owned by Dow Jones publishing group, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, reported over the weekend that the company was in discussions with potential buyers of the business.
Goldman Sachs has been appointed to lead the talks.
News Corp bought Dow Jones for $5.7bn (£3.45bn) in 2007 but was recently forced to write down $2.8bn of the purchase price after its publishing operations were hit by the fall in advertising.
Potential buyers of the indices business have been named as Bloomberg, FTSE – which is a joint venture between the Financial Times Group and the London Stock Exchange, MSCI Barra, Russell, Thomson Reuters or McGraw-Hill – the owner of index provider Standard & Poor’s.
The Wall Street Journal said negotiations are still at an early stage and the talks could also result in an arrangement other than an outright sale, such as a joint venture.
As well as the famous industrial average, the company also compiles more than 130,000 indices and licences the data to market professionals.
Should any new acquirer decide to change or scrap any of the indices, it could have a strong effect of providers of exchange traded funds (ETFs) as many of these investment vehicles track specific Dow Jones indices.
The industrial average was introduced in 1884 by Charles Dow and Edward Jones. Initially it contained 12 stocks, but this was raised to 30 in 1928. Included in the index today, are companies such as IBM, Wal-Mart, Caterpillar and ExxonMobil. General Electric is the only company that has been listed since the index was founded.
Tags: Dow Jones Index
) so just wondering if this is gonna come close to a record.
