How to cut a pie in the sky?

After months of negotiations, News Corp and Hughes Electronics, a division of General Motors, appear to be still far apart in their negotiations to bring Hughes’ DirecTV into News Corp’s Sky Global Networks satellite operation. In a conference with Australian fund managers, News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch indicated Thursday that legal and tax questions continue to stand in the way of a deal. Meanwhile, DirecTV CEO Eddy Hartenstein told Bloomberg News: “This is an extremely complex (transaction) and we won’t do a deal for the sake of doing one unless it’s right.”