Murdoch to meet News Corp rivals

NEWS Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch said today he plans to meet media investor John Malone in the coming months, and played down reports of hostility between the two tycoons.

He said relations were friendly, despite News Corp's adoption of a 'poison pill' defence strategy, effectively blocking further purchases by Malone, who recently moved to increase his voting stake in News Corp from 9% to 17%.

Murdoch expects to meet with Malone in the next month or two to discuss 'all sorts of possibilities' arising out of Liberty's increased holding.

'It's just John negotiating,' Murdoch said. 'We know each other pretty well. It's fine. We will see what comes.'

A major News Corp investor, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, said he supports Murdoch, and would increase his ownership of voting shares in the media company if necessary to support the News Corp boss.

Analysts believe Liberty might want to sell its cable-network assets to News Corp, including Starz Encore movie channels and its roughly 50% stake in Discovery Communications. Murdoch says Discovery is a 'very fine asset', but noted that Liberty owned only half of the company, 'so that makes it a lot less interesting'.

Meanwhile, Murdoch talked up his expansion plans, saying he hopes to launch a Fox business channel by next summer.

He spoke about his plans shortly after it was announced that News Corp will join the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index after the close of trading on 17 December.

News Corp earns about 80% of its profit in the United States and Murdoch argued that it needs to be based there, with access to North American capital markets, to compete effectively with its main rivals.

Shareholders last month overwhelmingly approved the plan to move the group's main listing from Australia to the New York Stock Exchange and shift its headquarters to Delaware.

Murdoch was dismissive of the main TV business news competition, CNBC, and claimed that the market for such a channel was wide open.

'I think CNBC is a pretty disappointing channel at the moment,' he told reporters after the annual shareholder meeting of the Fox Entertainment Group.

Murdoch has already announced plans to launch a reality-show channel, and has previously said he was keen to produce a business channel, but until now has given no timeframe.

Fox Business would compete head-to-head with CNBC, which last month saw off CNN's challenge when the broadcaster shut down its struggling financial news channel CNNfn.