WSJ Sale: ‘Everybody Is Talking To Everybody About Everything’

The battle over the rich bounty that is the Wall Street Journal just gets more and more confusing. An i-banker involved in the deal told the Financial Times that “everybody is talking to everybody about everything.” That pretty much covers it.

While Rupert Murdoch continues his bid for the paper, the increasingly anti-News Corp. Bancroft family is talking … and not just to Ron Burkle. If Burkle (who has some tepid support from the WSJ‘s union) tries to make a bid for the Journal, he might do it with the support of Yahoo!. Yahoo!, of course, has been having serious problems as of late. But the logistics of a GE-Pearson deal would pose unique challenges, too:

People familiar with the idea of combining GE’s CNBC business channel, Pearson’s Financial Times newspaper and Dow Jones’s Wall Street Journal cautioned talks were “preliminary” and a counter-bid for Dow Jones remained “a long-shot.” … To achieve such savings, however, the new company could have to shut the Wall Street Journal’s European and Asian operations and close the FT in the US, UBS said. Similar ideas have been rejected by the two companies in recent years, however, on the grounds that they risked damaging both brands.

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GE’s WSJ Adventure?

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