Murdoch ‘Succession’ battle begins
September 16, 2024
The court battle to determine the future of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox and News Corp via a £15 billion (€17.8bn) family trust begins this week in a closed Nevada courtroom.
The case sees 93-year-old Murdoch against three of his eldest children fighting over the voting shares and the power to control the group when he dies. Murdoch wants to amend the trust – set up when he divorced his second wife in 1999 – so that three of the children; Prudence, Elizabeth and James, cannot outvote the remainder; Lachlan, who has taken day-to-day control of the companies.
Two of the older children, Elizabeth and James, have previously been active in the business but have cut direct links disappointed by the hard-right ‘Trumpian’ drift of the businesses. Lachlan, though, is inline with his father’s political thinking – indeed he is sometimes said to be more of a ‘true believer’ than the, ultimately, transactional Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch senior has been married five times and has two younger children, Grace and Chloe, who do not have any voting rights under the trust agreement. Reuters and other news outlets petitioned to have the hearings in open court on the basis of the public interest in the future of a major news organisation. However the judge agreed with the Murdoch’s that this would disclose too much personal financial information.
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