PhillyInc

A fan of neither

The Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ) takeover saga has a Philadelphia (uh, Bucks County) connection. Dow Jones said in an SEC filing yesterday that Newtown Square resident Jane C. MacElree, a Dow Jones ex-director and member of the Bancroft family, resigned last week as head of two trusts that control about 15 percent of the family's stock. No reason was given for the resignation. No response to our calls to her home and to her attorney Lester E. Lipschutz at Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen L.L.P. in Philadelphia. A spokesman for the Bancroft family told PhillyInc there was no comment.

According to The Wall Street Journal, MacElree had opposed the idea of selling her family's business to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NYSE: NWS). Her side of the family, of course, lost that battle last week. Confirmation of the family's narrow vote to sell came on Wednesday Aug. 1. The SEC filing states that the date of MacElree's resignation was two days earlier, Monday, July 30. If MacElree had quit to protest the sale, she would not be the first. A week earlier, it emerged that German publishing executive Dieter von Holtzbrinck had resigned as a director in opposition to board's endorsement of the sale.

Whether or not MacElree is angry about the takeover, she seems certain to gain from it. The $5 billion takeover offered to her and other descendents of the founder of Dow Jones is a premium of almost 70 percent over where the stock had been trading before Murdoch made his offer.

On the other hand, MacElree couldn't be more different politically from the conservative Australian media tycoon and perhaps from other elites on Wall Street itself. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, MacElree is a dedicated donor to Democrats in Pennsylvania and nationwide. She has given at least $1,000 to Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democratic presidential hopeful, and at least $2,600 to Rep. Joe Sestak. By the way, MacElree's occupation in the campaign finance disclosures is variously as listed as "retired", "farmer", and "housewife."

- Jonathan Berr