So at last, the vexed question of who is going to succeed the now 94-year-old Rupert Murdoch has been settled. A deal has been announced that reveals that Murdoch’s eldest son Lachlan, the chairman of News Corp and CEO of Fox Corporation, will now be taking control of the family business. His siblings – sisters Prudence and Elisabeth and younger brother James – will each surrender their shares and any influence in the company to him, in exchange for a pay-out estimated at just over a billion dollars each. This concludes a torrid saga that was widely believed to be the major inspiration behind Jesse Armstrong’s acclaimed show Succession – and has ended in a surprisingly similar fashion.
Rupert Murdoch, love him or loathe him, is nobody’s fool
Rupert Murdoch, love him or loathe him, is nobody’s fool. He has a fair claim to be the single most consequential figure in newspaper publishing since Lord Beaverbrook. His canniness perhaps led him to concerns that the liberal-leaning James and Elisabeth, in particular, might attempt to dilute the right-wing politics that the News Corp empire has largely built its success and reputation on.
Lachlan was therefore always his chosen successor, or, in the parlance of Logan Roy from the show, his “number one boy”. To this end, Murdoch had attempted to alter a family trust that would have divided the corporation equally between his four eldest children to allow it to pass directly to Lachlan, but his efforts in this regard were unsuccessful. Last year, both he and Lachlan were accused of “bad faith” in this attempt by a Reno court, which means that this resolution, expensive though it might be, is as conclusive, and successful, as they both might have wished for.
Given that Lachlan has been in day-to-day charge of the business since September 2023, with his father given the honorary title of ‘chairman emeritus’, it is unlikely that anything very considerable will change in the future. Although it was suggested that Rupert was queasy about Donald Trump, and had leaned closer to supporting the Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Lachlan has no such qualms about solid MAGA values. He is likely then to continue his empire’s backing of the US president and, doubtless, JD Vance if and when he chooses to run. It is unlikely that James and Elisabeth, in particular, would have been so wholehearted in their support of the Republicans, but now they have been handsomely paid off, the question of their personal sympathies no longer affects News Corp’s day to day running.
Succession showed the Roy family being similarly and violently torn apart, as the three siblings Kendall, Shiv and Roman (with their elder half-brother Connor lurking in the background) initially appeared to unite to frustrate media mogul Lukas Matsson’s takeover of their company Waystar RoyCo, but their long-standing enmities and rivalries eventually saw them betray one another, allowing Matsson to come in through them and appoint the buffoonish Tom Wambsgans as CEO. It is unlikely that Lachlan will do anything so extreme: NewsCorp will remain a Murdoch family business for the forseeable future.
Yet the highly publicised schism has led to a rupture in relations – only Lachlan was present for Rupert’s fourth wedding to the Russian biologist Elena Zhukova last year – and when it is time for the magnate to ascend to the great newspaper building in the sky, he may wonder whether his politicking and manipulation was worth it, after all. Or on the other hand, this notably unsentimental man, if asked whether he regretted his actions, might take a leaf out of Logan’s book and repeat his catchphrase, a hearty “Fuck off!” In either case, this most fascinating of media sagas appears to be at an end – but in the ever-effervescent world of the Murdochs, you wouldn’t count against a late-breaking headline-grabber, either.
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