GE-Pearson Bid For WSJ Falls Through

That joint bid by General Electric and Pearson for the Wall Street Journal? It’s not happening, reports the Journal:

For Dow Jones, the elimination of GE/Pearson as a potential bidder diminishes its leverage in negotiating with Mr. Murdoch. These negotiations had for the past two weeks centered on the Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones, and its efforts to preserve editorial independence, but on Wednesday the family threw that discussion to the Dow Jones board. This freed the board to begin discussing issues of price with News Corp., which Dow Jones hopes will increase its bid. Yesterday, a board committee was conferring with its advisers over an editorial proposal. The Dow Jones board hopes to get a proposal to News Corp. by Monday, according to people familiar with the discussions.

In other news, it’s very, very nice to be Rupert Murdoch right now.

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