Murdoch's News Corp boosts US stock buyback to support share price

Jul 12, 2011, 18:22 GMT

New York - News Corp, whose market valuation has plunged amid a probe into alleged phone hacking by the company's British journalists, boosted its stock buyback programme to 5 billion dollars on Tuesday in an effort to improve share prices.

The company still had 1.8 billion dollars remaining from a previous buyback programme, Bloomberg financial news reported.

The company has lost 7 billion dollars in market value since last week, when the Australian-born media magnate Rupert Murdoch closed down the high-circulation Sunday newspaper, News of the World, over the hacking affair.

Now, there are signs that the British Parliament is determined to block Murdoch's 12.4-billion-dollar bid to take over broadcaster BSkyB.

In the most poignant case exposed in the scandal, the News of the World arranged for hacking into the cell phone of a missing teenage girl to hear messages being left by her parents. Messages were then erased by the hacker, leading the parents and police to believe she was still alive. She was later found killed.

This incident and others are under criminal investigation.

On Tuesday, all of Britain's main political parties vowed to back a parliamentary motion to prevent News Corp from taking over BSkyB, in which it already owns a 39-per-cent stake.

'It is not conceivable that Rupert Murdoch can expect to expand his empire while criminal investigations are ongoing,' Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said Tuesday.

Murdoch's US holdings include the conservative Fox News broadcaster as well as the venerable Wall Street Journal.