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The Man Who Owns the News

My recent reading has included a biography of Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff.

One point that I found remarkable: the way Murdoch announced the settlement of a critical matter of family business -- on the Charlie Rose show. It seems to have come as a surprise to everyone in his family.

The basic succession issue concerns who will run, and profit from, the Murdoch empire when Rupert is gone: the adult children he had with his first and second wives, several of whom have played various roles within that empire and see themselves as vested in it? or will the minors born to his third and present wife, Wendi, be dealt into the situation?  The tensions here aren't unusual. Blended families of one configuration or another aren't are common these days, after all. But the sheer quantity of the wealth involved -- and the placement of much of that wealth (billions of dollars worth) in a trust holding more than a quarter of News Corp's equity -- make this family drama noteworthy.

RM announced how this trust is going to accomodate his kids with Wendi in an interview on the Charlie Rose TV show in July 2006.

Wolff gives us a good chunk of the transcipt from that show. The gist of it is that Murdoch told the world that he the trust would give voting rights solely to his children by the first two wives, but the children with Wendi would be cut into the wealth. So far as Charlie Rose's viewers, or Wolff's readers, can tell, this will remain the case however old Wendi's kids get.

Presumably this is all because, as I've mentioned above, it is because the older children are vested -- RM feels they've been part of building the empire -- so they're the ones who are going to have voting control, and who will decide among them who gets to run the company when he is gone. But all his children will "get treated equally financially."


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