Rupert gets his trophy

NEWS reports suggested that the result was in doubt right up to the end, but Rupert Murdoch’s admirers were certain that he would prevail. “Rupert doesn’t ask questions to which he doesn’t already know the answer,” says one fellow media mogul. So when Mr Murdoch’s News Corporation offered in April to buy Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, he was already pretty sure that the reply, which eventually came in the early hours of Wednesday August 1st, would be yes—and it was.

Mr Murdoch has played a difficult hand brilliantly. He read the internal politics of the sprawling Bancroft clan, which owns a controlling stake in Dow Jones, perfectly—perhaps better than he reads his own family. His $5 billion offer was just high enough to swing the intergenerational politics of the Bancrofts his way, by enticing enough of the younger members of the clan to put money before the continuation of the family’s long stewardship of the company. And when some members of the family tried to get Mr Murdoch to raise his offer, his refusal to do so and his threat to walk away were convincing enough to get them to agree to his original offer.