Labour Party Vows to Fight Murdoch’s Bid to Take Over Satellite Company
By JOHN F. BURNS
NYT
LONDON — The $12 billion bid by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to take over Britain’s most lucrative satellite broadcast company, British Sky Broadcasting, ran into fresh trouble on Sunday when the opposition Labour Party promised to take the battle against the takeover to a vote in the House of Commons — a step that, if successful, could deal a fatal blow to the bid.
The News Corporation effort to buy the 61 percent of the company it does not already own had been in peril because of the phone-hacking scandal that led to the shutdown this weekend of The News of the World, the tabloid that was one of Mr. Murdoch’s biggest newspapers. Many commentators in Britain saw the closing of the paper as a move to cauterize the phone-hacking crisis and save the bid for the much more profitable company, known as BSkyB.
The Labour Party’s new move against the takeover came as the 80-year-old Mr. Murdoch landed at an airport outside London to take direct control of the crisis that has enveloped his company from executives of News International, News Corporation’s London-based subsidiary.
Apparently keen to emphasize his support for his management team in Britain, officials of News International arranged later in the day for news photographs to be taken of a smiling Mr. Murdoch with his son James, News International’s chairman, and Rebekah Brooks, a former News of the World editor who is the subsidiary’s chief executive. The two have been the focus of much of the public outrage that has been directed at the Murdoch empire in Britain since the long-smoldering phone-hacking scandal re-erupted last week.
(More here.)
NYT
LONDON — The $12 billion bid by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to take over Britain’s most lucrative satellite broadcast company, British Sky Broadcasting, ran into fresh trouble on Sunday when the opposition Labour Party promised to take the battle against the takeover to a vote in the House of Commons — a step that, if successful, could deal a fatal blow to the bid.
The News Corporation effort to buy the 61 percent of the company it does not already own had been in peril because of the phone-hacking scandal that led to the shutdown this weekend of The News of the World, the tabloid that was one of Mr. Murdoch’s biggest newspapers. Many commentators in Britain saw the closing of the paper as a move to cauterize the phone-hacking crisis and save the bid for the much more profitable company, known as BSkyB.
The Labour Party’s new move against the takeover came as the 80-year-old Mr. Murdoch landed at an airport outside London to take direct control of the crisis that has enveloped his company from executives of News International, News Corporation’s London-based subsidiary.
Apparently keen to emphasize his support for his management team in Britain, officials of News International arranged later in the day for news photographs to be taken of a smiling Mr. Murdoch with his son James, News International’s chairman, and Rebekah Brooks, a former News of the World editor who is the subsidiary’s chief executive. The two have been the focus of much of the public outrage that has been directed at the Murdoch empire in Britain since the long-smoldering phone-hacking scandal re-erupted last week.
(More here.)
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