Family Talks On A Sale Of Dow Jones Are Called ?Not Acrimonious?

In their last meeting before an expected vote on selling to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the family that controls Dow Jones & Company, owner of The Wall Street Journal, heard arguments for and against the deal yesterday from family members and advisers.

Over the next several days, the Bancroft family members will tell their lawyers where they stand, and the lawyers will tally the results.

“It was not acrimonious at all,” Christopher Bancroft, a Dow Jones board member, said as he left the meeting yesterday at the Boston Hilton. But like his relatives, he would not discuss what was said.

Family members traveled to Boston from several states to attend, while others took part by telephone, and in all some two dozen participated, people briefed on the meeting said.

There was no debate, they said, only a series of speeches. And as expected, the family was deeply divided; people close to them said the vote was too close to call.

Mr. Bancroft and a cousin, Leslie Hill, also a Dow Jones director, spoke against the sale, according to a person familiar with the deliberations. This person said that the two other people who represent the family on the board, another cousin, Elizabeth Steele, and the family’s chief lawyer, Michael B. Elefante, spoke in favor.

“The family had a very productive meeting and they now have all the information they need to make a decision,” Mr. Elefante said on leaving.

The meeting began around 2 p.m.; most of the advisers from outside the family left at about 7 p.m., and most family members and Mr. Elefante stayed until almost 8 p.m. A gaggle of reporters met the publicity-shy Bancrofts as they came and went, and some family members left through the kitchen to avoid questions.

Several outside advisers attended, including their lawyers and bankers; M. Peter McPherson, the Dow Jones chairman; and another Dow Jones director, Lewis B. Campbell, chairman and chief executive of Textron.

When the Dow Jones board voted last week to approve the $5 billion takeover, Mr. Bancroft left early rather than cast a vote. Ms. Hill abstained, as did an unrelated director, Dieter von Holtzbrinck, who then resigned from the board in protest against the deal.

The decision rests primarily with the eight members of Mr. Bancroft’s generation, who have most of the voting power through a complex set of trusteeships. The elders in Ms. Hill’s branch of the family — her mother, Jane Cox MacElree; and her uncle, William Cox, Jr. — are said to oppose the sale.

While Mr. Bancroft is opposed, it is not clear whether he speaks for his two siblings. Nor is it clear whether Ms. Steele, who favors the deal, represents the views of her two sisters.

The vote will turn in part on widely divergent views of Dow Jones’s long-term prospects as an independent company. Many family members, including some who favor the deal, are uncomfortable about selling The Journal to the News Corporation under Mr. Murdoch, who, they think, politicizes and sensationalizes the news.

Glenn Rifkin in Boston contributed reporting.

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