06-05-2014, 03:01 PM
Dow Jones & Company
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Dow Jones & Company is an American publishing and financial information firm.
The company was founded in 1882 by three reporters: Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser. Like The New York Times and the Washington Post, the company was in recent years publicly traded but privately controlled. The company was led by the Bancroft family, which effectively controlled 64% of all voting stock, before being acquired by News Corporation.
The company became a subsidiary of News Corporation after an extended takeover bid during 2007.[2] It was reported on August 1, 2007 that the bid had been successful[3][4] after an extended period of uncertainty about shareholder agreement.[5] The transaction was completed on December 13, 2007. It was worth US$5 billion or $60 a share, giving NewsCorp control of The Wall Street Journal and ending the Bancroft family's 105 years of ownership.[6]
In 2010, the company sold 90% of Dow Jones Indexes to the CME Group, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average /ˌdaʊ ˈdʒoʊnz/, also called the Industrial Average, the Dow Jones, the Dow Jones Industrial, the Dow 30, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index, and one of several indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow. It was founded on February 16, 1885, and is now owned by Dow Jones Indexes, which has its majority owned by the CME Group. The average is named after Dow and one of his business associates, statistician Edward Jones. It is an index that shows how 30 large publicly owned companies based in the United States have traded during a standard trading session in the stock market.[2] It is the second oldest U.S. market index after the Dow Jones Transportation Average, which was also created by Dow.
History
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was created by Dow Jones & Company co-founder and Wall Street Journal editor Charles Dow. The index was created to measure the performance of the industrial sector of the American stock market. Dow first created the Dow Jones Transportation Average & then after created the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Dow Jones Industrial Average consists of 30 stocks. The price-weighted average of the 30 stocks determines the index value.
The index is currently a scaled average & not the actual average of the prices of its component stocks. To compensate for the effects of stock splits and other adjustments,—the sum of the component prices is divided by a divisor, which changes whenever one of the component stocks has a stock split or stock dividend, to generate the value of the index. Since the divisor is currently less than one, the value of the index is higher than the sum of the component prices.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, comprised of 12 ‘smokestack’ companies, made its debut May 26, 1896. Twelve years earlier, Mr. Dow’s initial stock average, containing 11 stocks (nine of which were railroad issues) appeared in Customer’s Afternoon Letter, a daily two-page financial news bulletin that was the precursor of The Wall Street Journal.