Jeremy Warner's Outlook: Second coming of the dot.com boom as Murdoch rediscovers the joys of the internet

The latest object of News Corp's attentions is IGN Entertainment, which specialises in video games news and male lifestyle sites and would cost north of $800m to buy. Earlier this week it emerged that News Corp was also in talks to buy Blinkx, a video search engine, to add to a string of internet acquisitions which have included Intermix, operator of the social networking site MySpace.com, Scout Media, a sports internet company, and an online real estate listing company in Australia.

This is Mr Murdoch's second bite at the internet cherry, his first having largely and expensively turned to dust. Mr Murdoch didn't lose as much as some in the madness of the bubble and his exposure was in any case never so big as to seriously threaten the rest of his business empire.

Time Warner was so smitten by the internet bug that it was persuaded to merge with AOL on equal terms. The rest, as they say, is history. Mr Murdoch never lost his senses to that degree, but after falling under the spell of the internet guru Masayoshi Son, a Japanese financier who became one of the dot.com boom's chief cheerleaders, his experience was quite bad enough and you might have thought he'd learned his lesson.

Well perhaps he did, for this latest assault on cyberspace seems a much more calculated affair which should in time pay rich dividends. The dot.com bubble was a crazy time, but on one level the early pioneers and visionaries were right. The internet was always eventually going to become the backbone of a vast new business sector, making many areas of traditional business distribution redundant.

But this was never going to happen overnight, and in any case the internet would always struggle to realise its potential in the absence of cheaply priced and widely available broadband. That era has now arrived, causing internet usage for virtually everything from buying a car to reading the news, watching your favourite TV programme and communicating with your friends to grow like topsy. Any media company that ignores this powerfully dynamic new distribution channel had better fear for its future.

Mr Murdoch's renewed interest in the world wide web is therefore largely defensive, but the net also provides an unequalled opportunity for cross promotion of News Corp content and for its further monetarisation. At root, the internet is just another distribution channel, but it is perhaps also the most powerful and all embracing one ever invented.

Over the past year, Mr Murdoch has been forced to install poison pill defences in his company against the advances of his media rival, John Malone. To add to Mr Murdoch's misery, his son Lachlan has flounced off the board, dashing his father's hopes that he might one day succeed him. Yet as Mr Murdoch's internet purchases prove, he's lost none of his appetite for the new, despite his advancing years.

Aussies eye London Stock Exchange

Who'd have thought it? Just as the chances of provoking an auction for the London Stock Exchange seemed to fade, with Deutsche Börse forced into ragged retreat, up pops another potential bidder to revive them once more. And from the most unlikely of sources too.

This week it emerged that the Australian investment bank Macquarie is considering throwing its hat into the ring with an all cash offer in conjunction with unspecified partners. Macquarie is a curiosity as an investment bank in that it combines conventional mergers and acquisition advice with private equity, private banking and fund management. Its particular speciality is utilities, including toll roads, which it owns several of.

The London Stock Exchange still thinks of itself as much more than a utility, but in essence, that's what it is. The LSE is a mechanism for trading shares; if it fails to serve its customers adequately, they will find an alternative utility provider prepared to do it better. Yet though Macquarie should be commended for its audacity, its chances don't look good.

There are other potential bidders for the LSE, but the main contender now that Deutsche Börse is out of the game is Euronext, the operator of a range of European exchanges including the Paris bourse. As an existing operator of exchanges, including the London futures market Liffe, the synergy and cost-cutting benefits available to Euronext in acquiring the LSE are considerable. There are no such synergies available to Macquarie. Nor can Macquarie rely on the Competition Commission to block Euronext. All the competition concerns raised by the Commission can easily be addressed through behavioural remedies.

Macquarie could still in theory outbid Euronext, but it will have to inject a very high degree of debt leverage into the deal to do so. In order to pay down the debt, the exchange would have to be run in a highly aggressive manner. Macquarie has a reputation for doing just that with its acquisitions, but if that means whacking up the charges, then any such takeover would be vetoed by users.

Since the users still own most of the share capital, they would be uniquely well placed to do so. Even if Macquarie can produce the highest bid, which in itself is a big ask given Euronext's strategic advantages, it is not at all clear it can succeed. Macquarie's interest is a welcome story to enliven the dog days of summer, but I'd be amazed if it comes to anything.

Archie Norman; not available for hire

Normally the headhunters would be queuing round the block. With his mission successfully accomplished at Energis, Archie Norman, one of Britain's most accomplished business leaders, is on the market again. There must be any number of FTSE 100 companies just crying out for his talents as a chairman.

Yet as our interview on page 50 shows, they might as well save themselves the cost of the telephone call. Like a growing number of Britain's top executives, he's just not interested. This is not simply because there is so much more money to be made in private equity, though that undoubtedly is a factor, or because of the public vilification many of those who live their lives in the goldfish bowl of the listed sector find themselves subjected to, though that must be a factor too.

Rather it is because of the restrictions of modern day corporate governance, which Mr Norman regards as far too prescriptive to allow the traditional virtues of can-do business acumen to flourish. By way of example he points to his own experience at Asda, where eventually he became chairman, making way for Allan Leighton to replace him as chief executive.

This proved a hugely successful business partnership which produced an outstanding result when Asda, a basket case when they arrived, was sold to Wal-Mart. Yet it wouldn't have been allowed under present rules, which forbid the chief executive moving up to become the chairman.

We all know why these rules were imposed. Marconi and other corporate scandals of the last bust exposed severe weaknesses in the system of checks and balances to protect investors from reckless and negligent management. Yet in the end, good corporate governance is nothing to do with prescriptive ways of doing things. Rather, it's to do with sound judgement and competent people. In the absence of these two you can have any number of rules you like but they won't prevent calamity. The publicly quoted sector needs people like Mr Norman, but it's all too easy to see why he's so reluctant to step up to the plate.

j.warner@independent.co.uk