Rupert Murdoch isn’t going anywhere just yet
“TO WALK AWAY and retire, it’s a pretty dismal prospect,” Rupert Murdoch told an interviewer in 1998, when he was already well into pensionable age. If he ever did stop working, he added, he would “die pretty quickly”.
So the announcement on September 21st that the 92-year-old is stepping down as chairman of Fox Corporation and News Corp, the television and newspaper empires he has built up over more than 70 years, should be treated with some scepticism. Mr Murdoch will stay on as “chairman emeritus” and says he will remain “involved every day in the contest of ideas”. This week he advised staff: “When I visit your countries and companies, you can expect to see me in the office late on a Friday.” It was both a promise and a warning.
The handover of Mr Murdoch’s empire has been a gradual process. He has shied away from earnings calls since the sale of 21st Century Fox, the bulk of his film and TV assets, to Disney in 2019. The question of succession was in effect settled the following year, when James Murdoch, the younger son and sometime heir apparent, left the News Corp board, citing “disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions”. This left the path clear for Mr Murdoch’s elder son, Lachlan, who will take over from his father at the two family firms.
2023-09-22 14:44:54
Post from www.economist.com
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