I was rambling in another thread and I thought about it and had this crazy idea.... I was talking with someone tonight about how conservatives have a problem with disinformation or lack of information - really most of America does. And that reminded me of some maneuvering that Rupert Murdoch seemed to be taking of late to prevent any takeover attempts of Fox.... If I remember correctly, he was trying to set up some kind of rule that made it difficult for any one person to buy up more shares than he had.... What if one person didn't buy up more shares than he had? (Go to work research hounds!)What if a bunch of people bought up more shares than he had? Surely if so many Americans were willing to donate to the campaigns perhaps they would be willing to buy a share or two of stock in Faux News to take it over.... Perhaps even base it out of DU and elect people from here to run the company. Any thoughts? I checked out their annual report for 2003 and found this bit:
Commitments and contingencies
Shareholders’ Equity:
Preferred stock, $.01 par value per share; 100,000,000 shares authorized;
0 shares issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2003 and 2002 — —
Class A Common stock, $.01 par value per share; 1,000,000,000 authorized;
352,436,375 and 302,436,375 issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2003 and 2002, respectively 4 3
Class B Common stock, $.01 par value per share; 650,000,000 authorized;
547,500,000 issued and outstanding as of June 30, 2003 and 2002 6 6
Additional paid-in capital 12,780 11,569
Retained earnings and accumulated other comprehensive income 1,513 517
Total shareholders’ equity 14,303 12,095
Total liabilities and shareholders’ equity $ 23,299 $ 22,876
Source:
http://www.newscorp.com/feg/fegreport2003/FoxAnnual2003.pdfI take this to mean there are roughly about 900 million total outstanding shares of stock in Fox. The question is this: how much does Murdoch have? And also, how much would we need to over buy him by in order to get control free and clear? By my rough estimate if everyone that voted for Kerry bought on average nine shares of Fox, about $30 a share now, it could be done. Maybe Uncle George can help :) Any thoughts? Anyone knowledgeable about such things?