News Corp. shareholders learned how much revenue a closely watched Internet division would generate--if they were lucky enough to be invited to a meeting last week in Australia with Rupert Murdoch,
Reuters reports. Owners of the rest of the company's 3.2 billion outstanding shares were left in the dark until the following day when a UBS analyst put out a note on the proceedings. The disclosure
of sales targets for the unit that oversees the popular online teen hangout MySpace.com--responsible for much investor enthusiasm about News Corp.'s long-term prospects--spurred experts on securities
law to question whether Murdoch had given investors in Australia an advantage over Americans. While the four experts contacted by Reuters "stopped short of saying Murdoch had broken U.S. selective
disclosure laws," they said the incident merits further review. "I see a fair amount of smoke--I wonder how much fire is there," says James Cox, a securities law professor at Duke University.
"Certainly, if I were on the enforcement staff of the SEC, I would want to collect more information from News Corp. to (learn) exactly what transpired."
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