The rich get richer…
For those not following the news recently, News Corp. (see below) made a formal offer in April to buy Dow Jones & Co (The Wall Street Journal, among others) and an agreement was reached today for a measly $5.6 billion.
News Corp. is a publicly traded company controlled/run by Rupert Murdoch. I was amazed today to come across a wiki entry showing exactly how large News Corp is: News Corp Holdings. Included in the list: All of Fox movies and studio, Fox TV/channels, HarperCollins book publishing, Zondervan publishing/stores, over 100 newspaper publications worldwide, TV Guide (partial) and The Weekly Standard, Myspace, Photobucket, Rugby teams, 15% of the Colorado Rockies, and much more.
Wow.
Mr Murdoch, please read this and then offer a suggestion on what kind of Internet company you would like to purchase next. I would be happy to build it for you and even offer it at a much reduced rate of $1 billion. A steal compared to your Myspace and Dow Jones bids.
In a related search, Time Warner, Viacom, General Electric, Virgin Group, and Google aren’t too shabby either in their acquisitions/assets.
In a non-related search, I found out today from a fascinating site (though a little outdated) called They Rule that the inventor of the Internet and our former Vice-President, Albert Gore Jr. has been on the Board of Apple since 2001. Who would’a guessed it?
On They Rule, you can pick two companies and see how they are connected through their board members. Kind of like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon for the business world. You can also see maps created and save by others or view the boards/connections of several institutions like Harvard and Yale.