Murdoch Takes Over Collins for $721 Million

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch emerged victorious Friday from a long-running takeover battle after Scottish publisher William Collins PLC accepted his offer valuing the company at $721 million (403 million pounds).

The Glasgow-based firm, which numbers Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev among its authors and the Bible among its publications, is one of Britain’s biggest independent publishing companies.

Chairman Ian Chapman, reversing his earlier opposition to the hostile bid, urged shareholders to accept the offer, which was made by British-based News International PLC, a unit of Murdoch’s News Corp.

The turnaround came after Murdoch boosted his 41.7% stake in Collins, acquired in 1981. Murdoch now owns a controlling 54%. Collins and Murdoch’s News Corp. each own half of U.S. publisher Harper & Row Publishers Inc.

Murdoch was pleased with the new addition to his global media empire. “We’re very happy,” he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio from Australia. “I thought it all needed pulling together more so everybody would have the benefit of a first-class worldwide company.”

Apparently to head off a revolt by several leading Collins authors concerned that Murdoch control would affect editorial policy, News International pledged that Collins’ managers would retain autonomy over in-house policy.

Travel writer Eric Newby, who had threatened to defect, said he would wait and see if this proved to be the case.

In April, 1987, Murdoch paid $300 million for Harper & Row, an educational book specialist with a long history of distribution agreements with Collins.

A few months later Collins bought a 50% stake in the U.S. publisher, in a move designed to give it a foothold in the United States. The two companies have published many authors in common, and Harper has handled distribution for Collins’ best-selling “A Day in the Life of America.”