Murdoch Will Buy Rest of Fox Shares in $7 Billion Deal

[Richard King]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/10/business/media/10deal.html?ei=5006&en=b3ea0940d8cdf51c&ex=1106024400&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=

...The deal would solidify Mr. Murdoch's control over some of the nation's most valuable media assets like the Fox broadcast network and the DirecTV satellite service and help simplify the complicated structure of his far-flung company, the News Corporation, which includes newspapers, television, film and satellite assets around the globe....

[SamC]

The structure of the NEWS Corporation has been odd. NEWS an Australian company, owned all of the stuff not called "Fox" and 79% of Fox, which owned all of the stuff called "Fox", except for the Fox Sports Net, which has an even more convoluted set-up and 33% of DirecTV.

Under the new arangement, NEWS becomes a Delaware corp and owns 100 of everything, except some FSN outlets and 33% of DirecTV. Much better for the market.