Succession finale: The patriarch gets his way
Opinion
The decision to hand sole control to Lachlan has ended a family drama and there could be some positive outcomes with News Corp’s media properties.
The court hearing in Reno, Nevada into the Murdoch family trust that set out “irrevocable terms” on how the media business should be handled after Rupert Murdoch’s death was supposed to be confidential.
But it was well-known at the time that four of his children were equal members and inheritors: Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James.
Thanks to the leak to The New York Times, we learned that Rupert had tried to pull a fast one with his eldest son Lachlan.
They had tried to set aside the “irrevocable” terms and take control of the trust and the international business behind it.
The spurious argument that lay behind the inter-family coup was that only Lachlan could be trusted to maintain the politically conservative belief systems of News Corp businesses — and anything else could harm the financial interests of the other three.
James, seen as the most liberal of the family, certainly in matters of climate change, also claimed his father did not believe his daughters were able to take the necessary decisions.
This was all arrant nonsense, not just because the trust terms were supposed to be immutable but also because the other three children were all of sound mind and capable of deciding where they thought their best interests lay.
It really was a script straight out of Succession.
All hail the return of master political puppeteer Rupert Murdoch
Surprise decision
Obviously, Murdoch senior didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. In December, the Reno court accused Lachlan of acting “in bad faith” and attempting to stack the cards in his favour so that he would retain all the power in the group when Rupert died.
The pair pledged to appeal the decision and everything seemed perfectly positioned for a new series of the non-fictional drama.
And then, just like that, it was all over — and this one did not leak. Like a bolt out of the blue, 94-year-old Rupert and 54-year-old Lachlan have won.
When Rupert dies, Lachlan will have sole voting control of the remaining family shares in News Corp and Fox — and, with it, effective control of the organisation that will undoubtedly remain “conservative”.
Prudence, Elisabeth, James and their descendants will be out of the family business for ever. By way of compensation, they will each get one-third of the value of the shares they would have inherited — or around $1.3bn each.
No more public squabbling
Three questions remain. Why did the three decide to settle when they would almost certainly have won on appeal? What will they do with their considerably increased wealth? And what does it mean for the future of News Corp?
Prudence, Elisabeth and James had probably had enough of the public family squabbling forever bringing up echoes of Succession.
After the “bad faith” shown by Lachlan, they might not have looked forward to future years of working with a brother who so blatantly wanted all the power.
Anyway, this particular media patriarch is probably not about to die any time soon — after all, his mother lived to 103 and medical science continues to advance.
Better to be done with all the scuttlebuct and take the money, run and maybe over time return to being a more normal family.
Who could benefit?
Prudence has always been a private person and traces of this inheritance may simply disappear from public gaze. James and Elisabeth will probably use some of the money to support their individual business careers.
It would be nice if they used some of the money for philanthropic purposes.
There is not much public evidence of Rupert giving much of his billions away, unlike many other famous billionaires.
To be fair, in 2013 Rupert gave £10,000 to the Chelsea Pensioner Appeal to mark the death of Margaret Thatcher and $50,000 to the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting in memory of the murdered Sunday Times journalist.
There were a couple of much larger work-related donations: a personal £1m to charities selected by the family of Milly Dowler in 2012 in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal and a corporate $20m in 2013 to the Motion Picture & Television Fund.
But that’s as far as we know.
Perhaps Prudence, Elisabeth and James could build on that modest performance.
Future of News Corp
Meanwhile, there might be some positive outcomes from Lachlan retaining sole charge of the media businesses on top of them keeping their current political orientation.
He really, really wants the job and wants to continue running not just media businesses but newspaper businesses.
Who knows, the others might have preferred to sell the entire thing once the old man was gone — or, at the very least, the print part of it.
And actually only parts of the business remain diehard conservative.
The Wall Street Journal, under the editorship of Emma Tucker, has not bowed the knee to Donald Trump and has been critical of his destructive tariff obsession.
Following the release of the book of 50th birthday messages to Jeffrey Epstein, the paper is almost certain to emerge victorious from Trump’s multibillion-dollar libel action over the card that Trump denies he sent.
In the UK, The Times is far from rabidly conservative, while The Sun is torn between occasional attempts to be fair to prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and embracing Nigel Farage.
The overall outcome is clear. Even though three of the Murdoch children voluntarily settled, one more time against the odds Rupert has got his way.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.