GE-Pearson Bid For WSJ Falls Through

For Dow Jones, the elimination of GE/Pearson as a potential bidder diminishes its leverage in negotiating with Mr. Murdoch. These negotiations had for the past two weeks centered on the Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones, and its efforts to preserve editorial independence, but on Wednesday the family threw that discussion to the Dow Jones board. This freed the board to begin discussing issues of price with News Corp.,