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Murdoch to pursue Time Warner after buyout offer snubbed: NYT

[July 16, 2014]  (Reuters) - Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is determined to buy Time Warner Inc after the media conglomerate rejected an $80 billion buyout offer from Twenty-First Century Fox Inc, the New York Times reported.

Twenty-First Century Fox, controlled by Murdoch, offered last month to buy Time Warner for $85 per share in cash and stock, the newspaper reported. (http://nyti.ms/1na1K7y)

Time Warner's stock jumped more than 13 percent to $80.30 premarket. The company could not immediately be reached for comment.

Fox first approached Time Warner in early June and delivered a formal takeover proposal later that month, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Fox offered to sell CNN as part of its proposal to buy Time Warner, which has a market capitalization of about $63 billion, to clear any regulatory hurdles.

A Twenty-First Century Fox spokesman, Nathaniel Brown, declined to comment.

Time Warner's board discussed the proposal at length and sent a terse letter rejecting the offer earlier this month, saying that it was better off remaining independent, the New York Times said.

Fox had estimated that a combination would create $1 billion in cost savings and possibly more, primarily by cutting sales staff and back-office functions, the paper said.

(Reporting by Soham Chatterjee; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

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