Family Weighs Murdoch's Dow Jones Bid

When the Bancroft family meets Monday to consider Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion bid for Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., relatively few of them will actually be named Bancroft.

There will be a Hill, a Steele, the family's lead trustee, who is named Elefante, and yes, at least one Bancroft, first name Christopher. Other family members have last names that include Cox, Robes and MacElree.

And if their names are hard to keep track of, it's been just as hard trying to predict the outcome of their vote about Dow Jones. They initially rejected Murdoch's offer out of hand, but then agreed to meet with him and eventually won assurances that he wouldn't meddle with the paper's news coverage. Further complicating efforts to divine their leanings, the clan hasn't had a clear leader since the death in 1982 of Jessie Bancroft Cox.

The Bancroft clan has become large and far-flung since 1902, when Boston newspaperman Clarence W. Barron bought control of the company founded 20 years earlier by Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser. Control then passed to Barron's adopted daughter, Jane Barron, who married Hugh Bancroft, and on to their descendants.

Today, the family that controls Dow Jones and its flagship, The Wall Street Journal, is in its sixth generation, with some three dozen adult members spread out across the country. The key members of the group are:

Christopher Bancroft, a Dow Jones board member who owns an investment firm in Texas and has 19 percent of the company's supervoting stock.

Leslie Hill, another board member and a retired airline pilot, whose mother, Jane MacElree, has 18.5 percent of the company's supervoting shares.

Elizabeth Steele, president of a real estate development company in Vermont.

Michael Elefante, who is not a blood relative of the family but is their lead trustee and a member of Hemenway & Barnes, a Boston-based law firm that is the family's longtime trust adviser.

After the initial meeting Monday in Boston, the family is expected to take several days to consider Murdoch's bid. If enough of them commit to endorsing a deal, the process moves to final approval by the boards of Dow Jones and News Corp., the global media conglomerate that Murdoch controls.

News Corp. owns newspapers in Australia and the U.K., including The Sun and The Times of London, as well as the New York Post, Fox News Channel, Twentieth Century Fox and MySpace.

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[alexanderum]

How can the Bancroft Family allow the sale of the Dow Jones company to the modern equivilent of Julius Streicher? This bodes poorly for both the world and United States of America in particular and all financial markets in general.

[harp1963]

Rupert Murdoch, America's Hermann Gehring, new minister of propaganda for the Republican greed mongers of America.

[harp1963]

I can see it now, the Bancroft's grandparents who started the paper, rolling over in there graves as the Wall Street Journal has a new cartoon section portraying Bart Simpson as an evil ruthless bussinessman who will crush all who get in his way, in addition to a tabloid section mimicking the trash the Brits have come to love.

[DayNovo]

Oddball offers aside, Murdoch's grip on the Bancroft family jewels seems to be tightening.
If the deal does go ahead it's interesting to speculate where he might head next.
For further consideration click here: http://sneakybusiness.typepad.com/sneaky/2007/07/dow-to-sell-out.html

[usayesterday]

From the article:

"They initially rejected Murdoch's offer out of hand, but then agreed to meet with him and eventually won assurances that he wouldn't meddle with the paper's news coverage."


LOL! LOL! LOL!

These people can't be serious?! Right?!

Really, the one man who helped encourage George W. and the rest of the Neo-Con administration to go to war in Iraq, will actually agree to not "meddle" in the WSJs reporting?

As rich and powerful as this (extended) family may be....

...they also have to be one of the most gullible families in America if they believe that Rupert Murdoch is not going to urinate on their paper's reporting style!

(Speaking of which, if the deal goes through, I know I'll be able to use my future editions of the Wall Street Journal for liner in my parakeet's cage).