July 26, 2011, 4:20 AM EDT
By Jonathan Browning and Amy Thomson
(Updates with today’s share trading. For more coverage of News Corp., see EXT3 <GO>.)
July 26 (Bloomberg) -- British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc’s board of directors faces a dilemma over a potential 2.6 billion- pound ($4.2 billion) payout to shareholders that would also go to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the company whose bid for BSkyB collapsed because of a phone-hacking scandal.
The 14-person board, chaired by son James Murdoch, will on July 28 consider a one-time dividend to investors, said a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the meeting is private. BSkyB stock dropped 17 percent in seven days before the hacking allegations forced News Corp. to shelve its offer for full control of the U.K. pay-TV company. News Corp. is BSkyB’s biggest shareholder with a 39 percent stake.
“They’ve ended up in a position where they can’t do the right thing, because that involves doing the wrong thing by some people,” said Chris Bryant, the U.K. Labour lawmaker who is suing News International, the News Corp. unit that published the News of the World, the newspaper that was closed down this month as the phone-hacking crisis engulfed Murdoch’s media empire....read more
