The Bancroft family owns shares with powerful voting rights and has used them to scupper Murdoch’s offer of £30.12 ($60) per common share, which have previously been trading around £15 for the past year. The bid valued the company at £2.51bn.

The bid flies in the face of recent ABC figures for US newspapers that show a decline of 2.1% for daily papers and 3.1% for Sunday papers over the last six months.

The company issued a statement on behalf of the Bancroft family, quoting director Michael B. Elefante as telling the Dow Jones board that: “members of the family and the trustees of trusts for their benefit... will vote shares constituting slightly more than 50% of the outstanding voting power of Dow Jones... against the proposal submitted by News Corporation.”

The swift cutting down of Murdoch’s bid for the paper was a widely expected reaction to what would have been an odd marriage of the WSJ to the existing Murdoch stable of tabloid paper the New York Post, its American Idol show and others.

The rumour mill on Wall Street continues apace, with Dow Jones & Co stock continuing to trade just shy of the £30 mark, under speculation that the Dow Jones board and the Bancroft family may be looking to start a bidding war for the paper.

In the UK, Murdoch’s News Corp manufacturing arm, News International, recently won a deal to print The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, casting further doubt on the future of the West Ferry plant, which currently prints the papers.