“Together, we will ensure the strengths and benefits of each company are leveraged fully in the long term,” Mr Miller said, noting how the company aimed to create synergies between media businesses that serve audiences in different ways.
News had the whip hand
Talk of a possible takeover first emerged in February last year. The deal took a long time to complete as News negotiated a tricky shareholder structure with ANC.
News was able to do the deal at a bargain price of “only two or three times earnings,” said independent media analyst Bob Peters of Global Media Networks.
Rupert Murdoch takes a bath on blood testing. Photo: AAP
Before News took control, ANC was one-third owned by three main shareholders: Seven West Media, Nine Entertainment and pan-European satellite broadcaster Sky, controlled by 21st Century Fox, another Murdoch-controlled group which was spun out of News Corp in 2013.
Mr Peters said News had the whip hand in the deal because ANC’s 21-year carriage agreement with Foxtel ends in February 2017. Foxtel, 50 per cent owned each by News and Telstra, could have refused to renew the contract, allowing News to set up its own version of the Sky channels.
Negotiations become so strained that the refusal by some shareholders to countenance any changes in control and a speedy conclusion to talks saw News Corp executives draw up contingency plans to go it alone.
Murdoch loses in bio deal
Mr Murdoch is also facing losses of $US100 million ($A134 million) over his investment in the iscandal-ridden blood testing group, Theranos as a result of some powerful investigative reporting by one of his own newspapers, The Wall Street Journal.
The Journal was the first to raise doubts about the claims of Theranos celebrity CEO, Elizabeth Holmes — a billionaire at 30 and dubbed the Steve Jobs of biotechnology — about the company’s blood-testing technology.
Last year the Journal said raised concerns about the viability of the blood-testing technology and said it was sometimes not even using its technology in testing.
Ms Holmes’ stake in the group, at one point valued at $US4.5 billion ($A6.1 billion), was claimed worthless in June by Forbes magazine.
Mr Murdoch and other wealthy investors sunk $US635 million ($A855 million) into the group and some are now suing the company for having “consistently and deliberately misled its investors through outsize claims about its technology’s capabilities and potential to transform diagnostic testing,” Fairfax has reported.