...the News Corp., parent company of Fox News, seems to have done pretty well without Peter Chernin, as that New York Times piece conclusively demonstrates.
So perhaps it's time for a little revisionist history on the corporate leadership of NWS. We might start with Chernin.
Remember him? He was the Chief Operating Officer of NWS for 13 years, who could not come to terms with Rupert Murdoch on a new contract, and so left the company in the middle of last year. As we can see from the Google Finance chart, above, NWS has done pretty well without Chernin. Indeed, on June 30, Chernin's last day on the job, NWS stock was at 10. Now, just a little over six months later, it's at 16--16.42, to be exact, as of Friday.
That's a 60 percent increase, vastly outperforming the overall market. And it was around mid-February that it became clear that Chernin would not be staying, despite a furious campaign of leaks telling the world how vital Chernin was to the future of the company--gee, I wonder where those leaks came from?
On January 30, for example, Nikki Finke, a well-known Hollywood blogger, "reported" that the unresolved issue of Chernin's contract was hurting the NWS stock price;Finke quoted one investment analyst as saying, "Chernin’s departure would raise significant investor concern and could lead to other management changes at News Corp." On the day of Finke's post, January 30, NWS stock was at 7.24. And a wave of negative press in the days following the late-February announcement that Chernin was leaving pushed NWS stock down still further into March. (Once again, where did that negativity all come from?)
But now, Chernin is long gone, and the stock is at 16, more than double since the point when Finke, stenographer to the media stars, said that NWS stock would be in trouble if Chernin left.
So I guess Chernin wasn't so vital, after all. In fact, if one looks at the stock history, one might reach the opposite conclusion.
