As a keen rock climber, Lachlan Murdoch knows a thing or two about the importance of clinging on to perilous terrain. After the toughest ascent of his life – rising to the top of his father’s business empire – he has finally ensured that his place at its summit is assured.
The deal Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son has struck with his oldest siblings, Prudence, Elisabeth and James, will mean they give up their shares in the family business, handing Lachlan the long-term control that he and his father craved.
Arriving at such a deal, which will pay his siblings an estimated $1.1bn (£800m) each for their portions of the businesses, may seem like an anticlimactic finale for a poisonous family saga that has fascinated the world and inspired a smash hit television show.
Yet in reality, it marks a victory for Lachlan’s three siblings, who will get a far higher payment than they were previously being offered. They secured that after winning a high-profile court case, opposing an audacious attempt by Rupert and Lachlan to effectively write them out of the family trust that controls the Murdoch businesses, Fox Corporation and News Corp.
What Rupert and Lachlan dubiously labelled “Project Family Harmony” ended up producing one of the most spectacular episodes of the Murdoch family saga when the three other siblings took their father to court over the plan – with the full contents of the family’s mutual animus spilling into the public domain when the court documents leaked.
For Lachlan and his father, it means the businesses remain in the hands of someone determined to keep their conservative slant – most notably Fox, the empire’s cash cow. Immediately, all the deal does is maintain the status quo – Lachlan has been in charge for some time. But it means any sense of a softening of Fox’s pro-Trump stance is off the table.
Prudence, James and Elisabeth Murdoch arriving at court in Reno, Nevada during the family’s legal fight in September last year. Photograph: Alan Devall/Reuters
In reality, those close to the family say that any sense James and the others would have forced through a radical change at Fox were far-fetched, but even the narrower prospect that they may curb the network’s greater excesses has dissipated with the deal.
It also means Rupert has finally resolved the succession question in the way he wanted, by handing over the reins to his eldest son, who most closely aligns with his own political thinking.
“Would love nothing more than peace all around,” he once wrote to his ex-wife Anna, the mother of Elisabeth, Lachlan and James. “But the fact remains Lachlan is the best to run the business – greatly respected inside and outside!”
Lachlan has always idealised his father’s achievements and has at least talked about having a love of newspapers, still one of his father’s passions. He has also attempted to portray the same combative mentality that made his father a brutal dealmaker, saying News Corporation, which owns outlets including the Wall Street Journal, the Times and the Sun in the UK, and the Australian, was at its best when it was a scrappy underdog.
To say $1.1bn should be a life-changing amount of money is a comical understatement, but the Murdoch siblings will add the cash to the billions they have already inherited from their father. It gives each of them independent financial power of their own should they wish to wield it.
Ultimately, the pain and cost of the previous court battle appears to have been the heat needed to create the conditions for a deal. At the end of it, Lachlan emerges as a hugely powerful and influential figure not just in the media world, but in western politics.
Fox has found itself in a delicate position as the second Trump administration races towards the end of its hyperactive first year. The US president has been good for business and there has been a mutually beneficial – if tense – relationship between Trump and Rupert’s empire. Fox has been the network of choice for the Maga community.
Yet the pressure from some prominent Maga figures for Trump to release all documents relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has increased – with Trump resisting. Fox’s coverage of the issue has been helpful to the president so far, but the rise of a pro-Maga media world on YouTube and beyond has brought new pressures.
Rupert allowed some of his news outlets to run stories highly critical of Trump – most notably the Wall Street Journal’s article claiming Trump had composed a crude poem and doodle as part of a collection compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Trump sued, though the alleged picture and note has since been published.
Lachlan will now have to navigate the businesses and the politics at the helm of Murdochland. His father relished both. How to balance these pressures is Lachlan’s biggest challenge.
