Dow Jones & Company is an American publishing and financial information firm.
The company was founded in 1882 by three reporters: Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser. Like The New York Times and the Washington Post, the company was in recent years publicly traded but privately controlled. The company was led by the Bancroft family, which effectively controlled 64% of all voting stock, before being acquired by News Corporation. In 2010, the company sold 90% of Dow Jones Indexes to the CME Group, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The company became a subsidiary of News Corporation after an extended takeover bid during 2007.[2] It was reported on August 1, 2007 that the bid had been successful[3][4] after an extended period of uncertainty about shareholder agreement.[5] The transaction was completed on December 13, 2007. It was worth US$5 billion or $60 a share, giving NewsCorp control of The Wall Street Journal and ending the Bancroft family's 105 years of ownership
During this transition to electronic publishing, Phillips retired from his company positions, first as chief executive officer in January 1991 and then as chairman the following July. Peter R. Kann--a 25-year veteran of the newspaper whom Phillips appointed publisher of the Journal, as well as president and chief operating officer of Dow Jones & Company--became the new chairman and chief executive officer.
By 1990, with a multiplicity of news-service products and its acquisition of Telerate, Dow Jones had positioned itself in the global financial market to expand into intercultural databases. Telerate's foreign exchange operation was the highest risk, most intensely competitive of such ventures. There were about a dozen other Telerate products, including SportsTicker, a sports news service. In 1994 Dow Jones sold an 80 percent share of its successful SportsTicker enterprise to the sports network ESPN. But Dow Jones & Company faced many other challenges during the early and mid-1990s, not the least of which was relatively stagnant growth in its Wall Street Journal subscriber base. New ventures, moreover, met with mixed success. In 1993 the company, in alliance with the Hearst group, launched the successful magazine Smart Money. In 1994 Dow Jones and American City Business Journals launched BIZ, a monthly magazine for small business. BIZ was discontinued in 1995.
Hoping to strengthen its television presence, Dow Jones launched Asia Business News (ABN) in November 1993 and European Business News (EBN) in February 1995. In partnership with ITT Corp., Dow Jones announced plans in 1996 to purchase the New York television station WNYC from New York City for $207 million. With the acquisition complete, the partnership launched a combination business and sports channel, named WBIS+, in January 1997. Later that year Dow Jones and ITT agreed to sell WBIS+ to Paxson Communications for $257.5 million.
In 1996, despite heavy criticism, Dow Jones promised to spend $650 million on its lagging Telerate service. Dow Jones's first major move to invigorate its market share was to rename the service Dow Jones Markets. Kenneth L. Burenga, company and Wall Street Journal president, was appointed chief executive officer of Dow Jones Markets.
The press, market analysts, and even investors were critical of such a large reinvestment in the information delivery service, which had been quickly losing market share to competitors. Although the policy of the Bancroft family had long been that of noninterference with Dow Jones operations, in part to protect the editorial integrity of its news publications, a few of the younger generation of Barron heirs, including the executive director, William Cox III, began to ask questions and make demands of their investments. Cox later resigned.
Despite rumors that Dow Jones could be subject to takeover, the vote-controlling segment of family ownership (the family owned 30 percent of total shares and 70 percent of vote-controlling shares) stood behind the management's $650 million decision. Although the company's earnings would slip because of the reinvestment, Dow Jones was committed to its online market, hoping that long-term earnings potential would outlive any short-term squabbles among investors. To shore up this potential, Dow Jones formed an alliance with Microsoft to upgrade the PC software for Dow Jones Markets.
Subscriber base for the Wall Street Journal had been stagnant throughout much of the 1990s, but ad lineage had increased overall. Still, high newsprint prices cut into profits for the paper until 1996, when advertising lineage increased 13.9 percent, circulation increased slightly, and newsprint prices leveled off. Perhaps more significant for Dow Jones was the early success of Wall Street Journal Interactive, the Internet edition of the venerable paper. The interactive edition was launched in April 1996, and with more than 70,000 subscribers by early 1997, it was the largest paid publication on the Internet (where consumers were accustomed to accessing information for free).
The Wall Street Journal, however, suffered a setback in 1997, when a federal jury in Houston found the paper guilty of libel and ordered them to pay $223 million in damages to MMAR Group Inc., a failed investment company. The suit was filed shortly after MMAR folded. MMAR claimed that the Journal had committed libel while describing MMAR's difficulties with a major client. But the Journal did not agree. "We were chronicling the difficulties of this company," said Managing Editor Paul Steiger. "We did not cause them."
In the late 1990s, despite criticism that it had stagnated somewhat and was no longer capable of making good, quick decisions in the modern marketplace, Dow Jones was a profitable company that had expanded impressively into electronic publishing. It remained, moreover, a respected source of business information and traditional journalism, areas that had established its core business identity from the days of Dow, Jones, and Bergstresser.
Adapting to the Information Age: Toward the 21st Century
By mid-1997 it was clear that Dow Jones Markets was never going to recover from its sluggish beginning. Even with the infusion of $650 million to revamp the struggling subsidiary, the service still lagged behind its major competitors, which were proving far more adept at adapting to rapidly evolving online technologies. Dow Jones's earnings for the first quarter of 1997 revealed a significant decline in the profitability of its financial information services; operating income for the division dropped to $7.5 million, compared with $46.1 million in the first quarter of 1996. By early 1998, Chairman Peter Kann conceded defeat, and Dow Jones Marketing was finally sold in 1998, at a write-off of $922 million.
As the decade neared an end, Kann came under increasing pressure to find new ways to offer Dow Jones shareholders a better return on their investment. In addition to the Dow Jones Marketing disaster, the company's television operations were floundering, with losses of $48 million in 1996 alone. To help shore up its flagging television business, the company entered into a partnership with NBC in December 1998. The move was designed to consolidate the two companies' television news services in Europe and Asia, with the aim of cutting operation and distribution costs and bolstering the global presence of each company. Under the terms of the agreement, CNBC earned the rights to broadcast Dow Jones features worldwide. In addition, Dow Jones gained a stronger foothold in the U.S. television market through the integration of its news stories into CNBC's national programming.
During this time the company also began divesting itself of some of its less vital business sectors. In December 1999 it sold Dow Jones Financial Publishing Corp. to Wicks Business Information, LLC, and in February 2002 it sold four of its Ottaway Newspaper interests to Community Newspaper Holdings for $182 million. The sale of these business units, however, did not signal a wholesale streamlining of the company's holdings. Peter Kann was still eager to carve out a niche for Dow Jones in the highly lucrative technology sector. In June 2000 the company entered into a joint venture with Excite@Home to create Work.com, a business network offering a range of news and services that catered to specific industries. Unfortunately, the new venture was hit hard by the decline in Internet advertising revenues, along with the general lack of funding, in the wake of the technology stock crash, and was forced to terminate operations in March 2001 (Excite eventually folded its own operations in February 2002). While overall the company saw decreased sales in 2000-2001, it remained profitable due in large part to the revenues earned by its most prominent holding, the Wall Street Journal. In the aftermath of some of its recent failures, Dow Jones could still take some comfort in the continued high performance of its core businesses.
Principal Subsidiaries: Dow Jones Newswires, Inc.; Wall Street Journal; Barron's; Ottaway Newspapers, Inc.
Principal Divisions: Information Services; Business Publications; Community Newspapers.
Principal Competitors: Bloomberg L.P.; Gannett Co., Inc.; Reuters Group PLC.
Its flagship publication, The Wall Street Journal, is a daily newspaper in print and online covering business, financial national and international news and issues around the globe. It began publishing on July 8, 1889. Other editions of the Journal include:
The Wall Street Journal Asia covering news and business in Asia and around the world;
The Wall Street Journal Europe covering news and business in Europe and around the world;
The Wall Street Journal Special Editions, publishing translations of articles for inclusion in local newspapers, notably in Latin America.
Other consumer-oriented publications of Dow Jones include Barron's Magazine, a weekly overview of the world economy and markets; MarketWatch.com, the online financial news site; the monthly journal Far Eastern Economic Review; and the consumer magazine SmartMoney in conjunction with the Hearst Corporation.
The Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group provides financial news and information primarily to business customers. Its products combine content and technology tools to help drive decisions. Major brands include Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones Factiva, Dow Jones Indexes, Dow Jones Client Solutions and Dow Jones Financial Information Services.
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1930
Employees: 8,100
Sales: $1.77 billion (2001)
Stock Exchanges: New York
Ticker Symbol: DJ
NAIC: 511110 Newspaper Publishers; 511120 Periodical Publishers (pt); 514191 On-Line Information Services; 514110 News Syndicates
Key Dates:
1882: Charles Henry Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser found Dow, Jones & Company.
1885: Charles Henry Dow becomes a member of the New York Stock Exchange.
1889: Charles Henry Dow and Edward Jones begin publishing the Wall Street Journal.
1902: Clarence Barron purchases Dow, Jones & Company.
1949: Barney Kilgore becomes president and CEO of Dow Jones & Company.
1966: William Kerby succeeds Kilgore as president and CEO.
1978: Warren Phillips becomes chairman, president, and CEO of Dow Jones.
1987: Dow Jones launches Professional Investor Report.
1993: Asia Business News debuts.
1995: European Business News is started.
1996: Wall Street Journal Interactive goes online.
1997: Dow Jones enters into television agreement with CNBC.
Address:
World Financial Center
200 Liberty Street
New York, New York 10281
U.S.A.
The company was founded in 1882 by three reporters: Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser. Like The New York Times and the Washington Post, the company was in recent years publicly traded but privately controlled. The company was led by the Bancroft family, which effectively controlled 64% of all voting stock, before being acquired by News Corporation. In 2010, the company sold 90% of Dow Jones Indexes to the CME Group, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The company became a subsidiary of News Corporation after an extended takeover bid during 2007.[2] It was reported on August 1, 2007 that the bid had been successful[3][4] after an extended period of uncertainty about shareholder agreement.[5] The transaction was completed on December 13, 2007. It was worth US$5 billion or $60 a share, giving NewsCorp control of The Wall Street Journal and ending the Bancroft family's 105 years of ownership
During this transition to electronic publishing, Phillips retired from his company positions, first as chief executive officer in January 1991 and then as chairman the following July. Peter R. Kann--a 25-year veteran of the newspaper whom Phillips appointed publisher of the Journal, as well as president and chief operating officer of Dow Jones & Company--became the new chairman and chief executive officer.
By 1990, with a multiplicity of news-service products and its acquisition of Telerate, Dow Jones had positioned itself in the global financial market to expand into intercultural databases. Telerate's foreign exchange operation was the highest risk, most intensely competitive of such ventures. There were about a dozen other Telerate products, including SportsTicker, a sports news service. In 1994 Dow Jones sold an 80 percent share of its successful SportsTicker enterprise to the sports network ESPN. But Dow Jones & Company faced many other challenges during the early and mid-1990s, not the least of which was relatively stagnant growth in its Wall Street Journal subscriber base. New ventures, moreover, met with mixed success. In 1993 the company, in alliance with the Hearst group, launched the successful magazine Smart Money. In 1994 Dow Jones and American City Business Journals launched BIZ, a monthly magazine for small business. BIZ was discontinued in 1995.
Hoping to strengthen its television presence, Dow Jones launched Asia Business News (ABN) in November 1993 and European Business News (EBN) in February 1995. In partnership with ITT Corp., Dow Jones announced plans in 1996 to purchase the New York television station WNYC from New York City for $207 million. With the acquisition complete, the partnership launched a combination business and sports channel, named WBIS+, in January 1997. Later that year Dow Jones and ITT agreed to sell WBIS+ to Paxson Communications for $257.5 million.
In 1996, despite heavy criticism, Dow Jones promised to spend $650 million on its lagging Telerate service. Dow Jones's first major move to invigorate its market share was to rename the service Dow Jones Markets. Kenneth L. Burenga, company and Wall Street Journal president, was appointed chief executive officer of Dow Jones Markets.
The press, market analysts, and even investors were critical of such a large reinvestment in the information delivery service, which had been quickly losing market share to competitors. Although the policy of the Bancroft family had long been that of noninterference with Dow Jones operations, in part to protect the editorial integrity of its news publications, a few of the younger generation of Barron heirs, including the executive director, William Cox III, began to ask questions and make demands of their investments. Cox later resigned.
Despite rumors that Dow Jones could be subject to takeover, the vote-controlling segment of family ownership (the family owned 30 percent of total shares and 70 percent of vote-controlling shares) stood behind the management's $650 million decision. Although the company's earnings would slip because of the reinvestment, Dow Jones was committed to its online market, hoping that long-term earnings potential would outlive any short-term squabbles among investors. To shore up this potential, Dow Jones formed an alliance with Microsoft to upgrade the PC software for Dow Jones Markets.
Subscriber base for the Wall Street Journal had been stagnant throughout much of the 1990s, but ad lineage had increased overall. Still, high newsprint prices cut into profits for the paper until 1996, when advertising lineage increased 13.9 percent, circulation increased slightly, and newsprint prices leveled off. Perhaps more significant for Dow Jones was the early success of Wall Street Journal Interactive, the Internet edition of the venerable paper. The interactive edition was launched in April 1996, and with more than 70,000 subscribers by early 1997, it was the largest paid publication on the Internet (where consumers were accustomed to accessing information for free).
The Wall Street Journal, however, suffered a setback in 1997, when a federal jury in Houston found the paper guilty of libel and ordered them to pay $223 million in damages to MMAR Group Inc., a failed investment company. The suit was filed shortly after MMAR folded. MMAR claimed that the Journal had committed libel while describing MMAR's difficulties with a major client. But the Journal did not agree. "We were chronicling the difficulties of this company," said Managing Editor Paul Steiger. "We did not cause them."
In the late 1990s, despite criticism that it had stagnated somewhat and was no longer capable of making good, quick decisions in the modern marketplace, Dow Jones was a profitable company that had expanded impressively into electronic publishing. It remained, moreover, a respected source of business information and traditional journalism, areas that had established its core business identity from the days of Dow, Jones, and Bergstresser.
Adapting to the Information Age: Toward the 21st Century
By mid-1997 it was clear that Dow Jones Markets was never going to recover from its sluggish beginning. Even with the infusion of $650 million to revamp the struggling subsidiary, the service still lagged behind its major competitors, which were proving far more adept at adapting to rapidly evolving online technologies. Dow Jones's earnings for the first quarter of 1997 revealed a significant decline in the profitability of its financial information services; operating income for the division dropped to $7.5 million, compared with $46.1 million in the first quarter of 1996. By early 1998, Chairman Peter Kann conceded defeat, and Dow Jones Marketing was finally sold in 1998, at a write-off of $922 million.
As the decade neared an end, Kann came under increasing pressure to find new ways to offer Dow Jones shareholders a better return on their investment. In addition to the Dow Jones Marketing disaster, the company's television operations were floundering, with losses of $48 million in 1996 alone. To help shore up its flagging television business, the company entered into a partnership with NBC in December 1998. The move was designed to consolidate the two companies' television news services in Europe and Asia, with the aim of cutting operation and distribution costs and bolstering the global presence of each company. Under the terms of the agreement, CNBC earned the rights to broadcast Dow Jones features worldwide. In addition, Dow Jones gained a stronger foothold in the U.S. television market through the integration of its news stories into CNBC's national programming.
During this time the company also began divesting itself of some of its less vital business sectors. In December 1999 it sold Dow Jones Financial Publishing Corp. to Wicks Business Information, LLC, and in February 2002 it sold four of its Ottaway Newspaper interests to Community Newspaper Holdings for $182 million. The sale of these business units, however, did not signal a wholesale streamlining of the company's holdings. Peter Kann was still eager to carve out a niche for Dow Jones in the highly lucrative technology sector. In June 2000 the company entered into a joint venture with Excite@Home to create Work.com, a business network offering a range of news and services that catered to specific industries. Unfortunately, the new venture was hit hard by the decline in Internet advertising revenues, along with the general lack of funding, in the wake of the technology stock crash, and was forced to terminate operations in March 2001 (Excite eventually folded its own operations in February 2002). While overall the company saw decreased sales in 2000-2001, it remained profitable due in large part to the revenues earned by its most prominent holding, the Wall Street Journal. In the aftermath of some of its recent failures, Dow Jones could still take some comfort in the continued high performance of its core businesses.
Principal Subsidiaries: Dow Jones Newswires, Inc.; Wall Street Journal; Barron's; Ottaway Newspapers, Inc.
Principal Divisions: Information Services; Business Publications; Community Newspapers.
Principal Competitors: Bloomberg L.P.; Gannett Co., Inc.; Reuters Group PLC.
Its flagship publication, The Wall Street Journal, is a daily newspaper in print and online covering business, financial national and international news and issues around the globe. It began publishing on July 8, 1889. Other editions of the Journal include:
The Wall Street Journal Asia covering news and business in Asia and around the world;
The Wall Street Journal Europe covering news and business in Europe and around the world;
The Wall Street Journal Special Editions, publishing translations of articles for inclusion in local newspapers, notably in Latin America.
Other consumer-oriented publications of Dow Jones include Barron's Magazine, a weekly overview of the world economy and markets; MarketWatch.com, the online financial news site; the monthly journal Far Eastern Economic Review; and the consumer magazine SmartMoney in conjunction with the Hearst Corporation.
The Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group provides financial news and information primarily to business customers. Its products combine content and technology tools to help drive decisions. Major brands include Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones Factiva, Dow Jones Indexes, Dow Jones Client Solutions and Dow Jones Financial Information Services.
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1930
Employees: 8,100
Sales: $1.77 billion (2001)
Stock Exchanges: New York
Ticker Symbol: DJ
NAIC: 511110 Newspaper Publishers; 511120 Periodical Publishers (pt); 514191 On-Line Information Services; 514110 News Syndicates
Key Dates:
1882: Charles Henry Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser found Dow, Jones & Company.
1885: Charles Henry Dow becomes a member of the New York Stock Exchange.
1889: Charles Henry Dow and Edward Jones begin publishing the Wall Street Journal.
1902: Clarence Barron purchases Dow, Jones & Company.
1949: Barney Kilgore becomes president and CEO of Dow Jones & Company.
1966: William Kerby succeeds Kilgore as president and CEO.
1978: Warren Phillips becomes chairman, president, and CEO of Dow Jones.
1987: Dow Jones launches Professional Investor Report.
1993: Asia Business News debuts.
1995: European Business News is started.
1996: Wall Street Journal Interactive goes online.
1997: Dow Jones enters into television agreement with CNBC.
Address:
World Financial Center
200 Liberty Street
New York, New York 10281
U.S.A.