Are News Corp dipping their toe into e-learning?
publication date: Oct 4, 2006
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author/source: R Taylor
While in Australia, we heard an interesting rumour that News Corporation were about to purchase a small e-learning company specialising in compliance training for the financial services market. With a turnover of around A$2m, this would probably rate as the smallest deal we have ever heard of by the media behemoth and how or where this business might fit within News’s local operations is a bit of a mystery.
The deal was being brokered by a local IT entrepreneur who has recently sold out of the listed IT company he founded and is now chairing a San Francisco firm who describe themselves as ‘a boutique corporate advisory firm focused on cross-border mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and business development services to emerging growth companies’.
Within News Corp there are enough education-related businesses that in theory could link together to form an education division. Anyone who knows how News Corp operates will know why this is highly unlikely.In the UK, Sky have also been discussing education and while they distribute Teacher’s TV the relationship could hardly be described as warm, close or cordial. We wonder whether this new found interest in education may have something to do with Mr Murdoch’s Damascene conversion to the profits of the Internet?