Rupert Murdoch is pulling the plug on a possible merger of News Corp. and foxes

Rupert Murdoch has a proposal to sell his News Corp. and Fox Corp. reunited, pulled the plug and said the merger didn’t come at the right time for shareholders.

In similar statements Tuesday, the companies said their boards had received letters from Murdoch withdrawing the plan.

“Mr. Murdoch indicated that he and (son and Fox Corp. chief executive) Lachlan K. Murdoch have determined that a combination is beneficial to News Corp. shareholders. and FOX is not optimal at this time,” the statements said.

The elder Murdoch first brought about the merger of News Corp. — which owns The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Sun and The Times in the UK, and book publisher HarperCollins — and Fox Corp., which controls Fox News, Fox Sports and local TV stations, launched , in October, according to regulatory filings.

The media mogul had sent letters to the companies’ boards, which formed committees to review a possible merger.

news corp started out as one company but was split into two companies in 2013: 21st Century Fox with the entertainment assets and News Corp. with publishing and media stocks including The Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins.

The Murdoch family controls both companies, but had spun off the Fox properties into a separate company after selling a large portion of the Fox entertainment empire to Walt Disney Co. for $71 billion, which closed in 2019.

In premarket trading, shares of News Corp. was up 1.8% while Fox’s shares gained 3.9%.

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