Rupert Murdoch’s most loyal business commentator, Terry McCrann, doesn’t take kindly to anyone who suggests the Sun King is anything but invincible. Back in October 2004, The Age made the following overblown claim on its front page the day after News Corp shareholders voted to move the company to Delaware:

It was difficult not to wonder if the News shift to the US was due in some way to the presence in the past six years of corporate governance warrior Stephen Mayne.

McCrann was outraged and responded with a column blasting me as “an utterly insignificant gadfly” and declaring that The Age was run by a bunch of 12-year-olds:

You might just as well, and as credibly, have put the shift down to Murdoch being bitten by a mosquito on one of his visits to Adelaide. Right. That’s it. We’re off to Delaware.

Well, here’s another big claim that might upset McCrann, but I reckon the surge in News Corp’s non-voting shares on Friday was driven by my shareholder resolution calling for them to be given the vote.

This view was given a run by the Financial Times (and The Sunday Age), although it’s only me making the claim, not some credible third party.

That said, I challenge anyone to explain why the voting shares rose by 49c to $27.09 in Australia on Friday, when the non-voting shares rocketed by 78c to $25.51, a gain of 3.15 per cent on a day when the broader market was up just 0.5 per cent.

There’s little doubt that if my resolution was adopted News Corp shares would trade higher. That doesn’t mean I can necessarily claim responsibility for Friday’s rise in the voting shares. However, there isn’t any other possible explanation for the 29c contraction in the spread between the two different classes of shares.

The discount applied to the non-voting shares reduced from $1.87 to $1.58 on Friday. That’s courtesy of my resolution and Friday’s Fin Review when Alan Jury devoted some back page space to the issue in his Chanticleer column. The Rooster doesn’t move markets too much these days, but Friday was one to remember.

Jury backed it up with a comprehensive comment piece in The Weekend AFR, quoting extensively from the supporting statement. He is spot on to point out that the News Corp share price has severely lagged its other metrics of rising, revenue, profits and assets since the move to America. My resolution would fix this and get the stock up above $30, provided Rupert also ditched the poison pill.

The spread has blown out by 9c in morning trade today, but remains 20c narrower than last Thursday. That’s my handiwork. Over to you, Terry. Say it ain’t so.

Stephen Mayne publishes the shareholder activist website www.maynereport.com.