Rupert Murdoch's News Corp edged closer to winning control of Dow Jones yesterday as Pearson and General Electric said they had decided against a counter-bid for the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

The owners of the Financial Timesconfirmed that they had held "exploratory talks with GE about opportunities in business and financial information, including Dow Jones" but had decided not to pursue a combination of GE's CNBC business channel, the Financial TimesGroup and Dow Jones.

People close to GE said it had concluded that it could not justify matching or beating Mr Murdoch's $5 billion offer and ruled out any further bid for Dow Jones.

Pearson and GE were, however, discussing "co-operating agreements" between CNBC and the Financial TimesGroup, which includes the newspaper, FT.com, FT Business magazinesand a controlling stake in Interactive Data Corporation.

The Pearson announcement came a day after Dow Jones's board took direct control of negotiations with News Corp.

Several people close to the matter predicted that the move would speed the process after Dow Jones's controlling Bancroft family had become bogged down in internal deliberations.

The board had held back until this week because the Bancrofts, who hold 64 per cent of the votes at Dow Jones, had opposed News Corp's $60 per share offer. The family dropped its resistance two weeks ago and met Mr Murdoch to discuss ways of protecting the journal's editorial independence in the event of a sale.

If News Corp and the Dow Jones board agree to a set of editorial guidelines, the next stage of the negotiations is expected to be around price.

Analysts believe Mr Murdoch could raise his offer to $65 per share and still have scope for $10 billion of share buybacks.