Big Dow Jones shareholder opposes News Corp. bid

Rupert Murdoch’s bid for Dow Jones & Co. ran into more resistance Sunday as a large Dow Jones shareholder said he strongly opposed News Corp.’s bid to take over the financial news publisher, which owns the Wall Street Journal.

Jim Ottaway Jr., a former Dow Jones board member, said in a statement posted on the Journal’s website that a Murdoch takeover would lead to the “loss of the independence and integrity of a leading national editorial voice.”

“Rupert Murdoch comes from a very different tradition of Australian-British media ownership and editorial practice in which he has for a long time expressed his personal, political, and business biases through his newspapers and television channels,” Ottaway said. “The Bancroft family has treated Dow Jones as a public trust, not for personal or political interests.”

Ottaway said he also opposed a sale to Murdoch because it would further concentrate media ownership and influence.

The $5-billion bid from Murdoch’s News Corp. has already been opposed by Dow Jones’ controlling shareholders, the Bancroft family, but the family is not united in its stance.

Dow Jones has said a family representative indicated that Bancroft family members representing 52% of the company’s shareholder vote would oppose the bid -- not quite all of the family’s voting power of 64%.

The opposition of Ottaway, whose family controls about 6.2% of Dow Jones’ super-voting shares, would make it tougher for Murdoch to gain control of Dow Jones.

Separately, a Dow Jones spokesman said the company had received a subpoena from the New York attorney general’s office and a request for information from the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the trading of Dow Jones options before the announcement of News Corp.’s bid Tuesday, which sent the shares soaring.