LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, founder and chief executive of the Bloomberg Group, has in recent years expressed a desire to acquire a major newspaper but has not approached Rupert Murdoch about taking over Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, sources told Reuters.
News site Axios, citing a source familiar with the matter, reported earlier Friday that Michael Bloomberg was considering buying Dow Jones.
The billionaire would also be interested in buying the Washington Post if its current owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, wanted to get rid of it, according to information from Axios.
A spokesman for the Washington Post said the newspaper was not for sale.
If such a project were to see the light of day, Michael Bloomberg would be at the helm of an information and financial data giant, which would strengthen his hold on the sector and likely allow his company to increase sales of its software. its main source of income.
A spokesman for Bloomberg LP said the information reported by Axios was speculative and had “no comment.”
Neither Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos nor a spokesman for Rupert Murdoch responded to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski, Greg Roumeliotis and Anirban Sen, with contributions by Nivedita Balu, Aditya Soni, Tiyashi Datta, Alexandra Alper, Raphael Satter and Milana Vinn, writing by Karl Plume; French version Camille Raynaud, editing by Kate Entringer)
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