The Bancrofts Were Totally Outgunned
The Observer takes another look at the Murdoch takeover today, and argues that the Bancrofts were kinda misled by their advisers about the takeover deal. Why? Well, it has to do with James Ottaway Jr.'s rather unfortunate choice of words ("30 shekels of silver to their investment bankers, and 30 shekels of gold to their corporate lawyers") about how much money the Bancrofts had to shell out to their outside advisers to get the deal done. $30 million! And all of it was paid by... News Corp.? The most obvious problem being: say that Rupert was reportedly working on this deal for two years. The Bancrofts were working on it for, what, two months? Yeah.
