The German billionaire who wants the Wall Street Journal

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In today’s newsletter:

Media empire Axel Springer’s next target

It has been rumoured for a while that Politico owner Axel Springer could be interested in buying Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.

In an interview with the FT, chief executive and co-owner Mathias Döpfner acknowledged as much publicly — albeit with many caveats.

Döpfner is close to finalising a €13.5bn break-up with KKR. That will see the private equity firm walk away with the Berlin-based Axel Springer’s classifieds business, leaving him and the widow of the company founder with 98 per cent ownership of the media assets.

Döpfner said the split offers “new freedom and new opportunity” but also higher risk. He’s seeking savings at his German newspapers Bild and Die Welt.

But he has been driving an expansion in the US, where he paid $343mn in 2015 to take control of Business Insider and then bought Politico for $1bn in 2021. The Journal would represent a significant step up, putting him in the top league of American media owners.

Döpfner, who tried unsuccessfully to buy the FT in 2015, was eager to stress that the WSJ doesn’t appear to be up for sale. But some News Corp insiders believe that, amid a bitter family feud, Murdoch could seek a buyer in order to avoid passing it on to three of his children.

Even if it were up for grabs, the paper would come with a high price tag. Murdoch paid $5.6bn in 2007. Some industry figures believe that Axel Springer, whose media unit was valued at €3.5bn in the KKR split, would struggle to finance such a big acquisition.

The 62-year-old, who sits on the board of Netflix and has courted US entrepreneurs including Elon Musk, insists that the likelihood of him actually getting the paper “is close to zero”.

Others say it would be foolish to underestimate the charming and well-connected German media boss.

More tumult for the UK’s Wood Group

If Oscar Wilde wrote about M&A, he may have said this about the Scottish engineering company Wood Group: “To lose one takeover may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness.”

In 2023, the US private equity firm Apollo Global Management abandoned a months-long plan to acquire the UK-listed Wood Group for about £2.2bn, or 240p a share.

Last year, Dubai’s Sidara walked away from its own plan to buy the company at 230p a share, leading the group’s stock to collapse nearly 40 per cent.

Both those episodes set the scene for Wednesday, when Wood Group’s chief financial officer Arvind Balan stepped down with immediate effect after he admitted to misstating his professional qualifications.

Wood Group said its board had accepted Balan’s resignation in an announcement hours after being questioned by the FT about his qualifications.

The exit of its CFO comes at a critical moment for the FTSE 250 company, whose share price had plummeted after it reported last week that its free cash flow for 2025 would be negative by as much as $200mn, having previously stated it would be positive.

All of the tumult has led the group’s share price to dramatically drop, leading to increased speculation that it could once again become a takeover target now that its market capitalisation has fallen to just around £170mn.

It also is a cautionary tale for what has been one of the few multinational success stories that the UK was able to grow out of the development of its North Sea resources.

Whatever the case, the company’s investors will surely be wishing that a deal had been done before the latest stock price dive.

Job moves

• Cantor Fitzgerald’s chair and chief executive Howard Lutnick is stepping down after being confirmed as US secretary of commerce. Pascal Bandelier, Sage Kelly and Christian Wall will replace him as co-CEOs. Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyle will be chair and vice-chair, respectively. 

• AlbaCore Capital Group has promoted Davide Chiesa to partner. He is currently head of research at the firm, and previously worked at CQS and Morgan Stanley. 

• Weil Gotshal is establishing a new leadership committee that will be headed by Michael Aiello after executive partner Barry Wolf announced he will retire in 2027.

Smart reads

Backlash risk Be careful what you wish for, the FT’s Richard Waters writes. Silicon Valley’s frantic courting of Donald Trump appears to be paying off, but the companies could pay a price.

Bank dynasty Howard Lutnick’s two twenty-something-year-old sons, Brandon and Kyle, have landed top jobs at Cantor Fitzgerald after their father was confirmed as commerce secretary, Bloomberg reports. One’s a DJ.

Growing up Murdoch James Murdoch, the son of famed media tycoon Rupert, sat down for a series of interviews with The Atlantic to talk about the family’s mind games, sibling rivalry and the war for the family empire.

News round-up

Meta slashes staff stock awards as group embarks on AI spending drive (FT)

Citi becomes latest US company to abandon diversity targets (FT)

Walmart points to ‘uncertain time’ with warning of weaker sales growth (FT)

Renault will not rule out Russia return, CEO says (FT)

Amazon MGM to take over creative direction of James Bond franchise (FT)

UK scopes plan to grant banks access to welfare claimants’ accounts (FT)

Anglo American writes down De Beers value by $2.9bn (FT)