Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloid newspaper, The Sun, loves a good back-to-basics campaign. Now one appears to be under way at News Corpitself. As the UK hacking scandal rumbles on, Mr Murdoch’s media empire needs to protect the bits that are not toxic (almost all of it) from the bit that is (the UK newspapers). News Corp confirmed yesterday that it was considering splitting into two separately listed companies. Spin-offs are mostly done to realise immediate shareholder value. But, given the nature of the hacking scandal and the poor state of the newspaper business, this spin-off is more about long-term recovery than financial engineering.
魯珀特?默多克(Rupert Murdoch)旗下的英國小報《太陽報》(The Sun)喜歡徹底的“回歸根本”(back-to-basics)運動。現在，新聞集團(News Corp)自己似乎也在發起這種運動。隨著英國竊聽丑聞愈演愈烈，默多克的媒體帝國有必要保護旗下的“無毒”業務（幾乎全部業務）免受“有毒”業務（英國報紙）的影響。新聞集團昨日證實稱，它正考慮分拆為兩家獨立的上市公司。大部分時候，企業分拆是為了能立即實現股東價值。但是，鑒于竊聽丑聞的性質和報紙業務的低迷狀態，這一分拆更多是著眼于新聞集團的長期復蘇，而不是出于財務上的考慮。