By: Mark Fitzgerald While Rupert Murdoch's deal to buy Dow Jones & Co. was not yet official before the close of trading Tuesday, Wall Street rendered its classic takeover verdict, pushing down buyer News Corp.'s stock -- and pumping up the seller's price by more than 11%.
Dow Jones (NYSE:DJ) soared $5.75, or 11.15%, to $57.31 on reports that enough members of the Bancroft family of controlling stockholders had agreed to his three-month-old $60-a-share, $5 billion unsolicited bid for the publisher The Wall Street Journal.
News Corp. (NYSE:NWS-A) fell a modest 15 cents, or 0.71%, to $21.12 on the news.
The Dow Jones deal had a kind of halo effect on a couple of other big newspaper companies.
Gannett Inc. (NYSE:GCI) ended the day up $1.76, or 3.36%, to $49.91. The rise came after a Bears Stearns analyst called shares in the nation's largest newspaper company undervalued. At one point, Gannett traded up 4.9%. It's 52-week range is $47.61 to $63.50.
The New York Times Co. (NYSE:NYT) ended up 33 cents, or 1.46% to $22.86.
The rest of the sector ended down on a day when a late afternoon sell-off shaved nearly 150 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The biggest percentage loser was Sun-Times Media Group (NYSE:SVN), which ended down 15 cents, or 3.46%, to $4.19.
For the second consecutive day, Lee Enterprises (NYSE:LEE) established a new 52-week trading low, ending trading down 37 cents, or 2.06%, at $17.61.
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