{"id":123678,"date":"2025-09-08T21:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T21:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/123678\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T21:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T21:33:09","slug":"murdochs-resolve-family-trust-succession-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/123678\/","title":{"rendered":"Murdochs Resolve Family Trust Succession Dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Murdochs have resolved their years-long legal battle over the family\u2019s trust, which holds control to the future of the News Corporation and Fox Corporation media empire.<\/p>\n

The settlement will see new trusts established for Lachlan Murdoch, Grace Murdoch and Chloe Murdoch. Prudence MacLeod, Elisabeth Murdoch and James Murdoch will cease to be beneficiaries in any trust holding shares in News Corp or Fox Corporation. <\/p>\n

The departing beneficiaries will receive cash, which will be funded from the proceeds of a sale of 14.2 million shares of News Corp Class B common stock and approximately 16.9 million shares of Fox Corporation Class B common stock previously held by the MFT. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a holding company will be established for the remaining trust beneficiaries and own all of the remaining Fox and News Corp. shares previously held by the MFT, which will consist of 36.2% of Fox\u2019s Class B common stock, 31% of News Corp Class B common stock and less than 0.1% of the two companies\u2019 Class A common stock. <\/p>\n

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Under the terms of the deal, Prudence, Elisabeth and James will each receive $1.1 billion for their shares. <\/p>\n

In the six month period following the transactions, the trio will also sell their \u201cde minimis personal holdings\u201d in Fox and News Corp. to ensure they have no direct or indirect interest in the companies and will be subject to a long-term standstill agreement preventing them and their affiliates from acquiring shares of Fox and News Corp. and taking certain other actions with respect to the companies.<\/p>\n

Lachlan will have sole voting control of LGC Holdco through his appointed managing director. The term of the trust will be extended through 2050. Rupert Murdoch will continue in his role as chairman emeritus.<\/p>\n

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The Murdoch Family Trust (MFT), which was established by Rupert in 1999 following his divorce from Anna Torv, gave Lachlan, Elisabeth, Prudence and James equal voting control over Fox Corp. and News Corp. upon Rupert\u2019s death. Murdoch\u2019s two youngest daughters with Wendi Deng, Chloe and Grace, did not have voting rights in the trust, but were also listed as beneficiaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fight between the Murdochs first began back in late 2023 after the 93-year-old media mogul filed paperwork in an attempt to to alter the family\u2019s irrevocable trust in a bid to give sole power to his eldest son, Lachlan, after his death. Rupert reportedly feared a coup from his more liberal children \u2014 saying in\u00a0messages<\/a>\u00a0it would be a \u201cdisaster\u201d if his companies \u201cfell into the wrong hands.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That plan, ironically dubbed \u201cProject Family Harmony,\u201d failed in December, when a Nevada probate commissioner\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0Rupert acted in \u201cbad faith\u201d toward the trust\u2019s beneficiaries, though the patriarch said he would appeal the decision. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would be surprised if this didn\u2019t come to a settlement, because the family strife this has clearly provoked is not good for the stability of the companies,\u201d Reid Weisbord, a professor at Rutgers Law School who specializes in wealth transfers and estate law, told TheWrap back in March<\/a>. \u201cThis conflict breeds uncertainty. That\u2019s not good for the company and it\u2019s not good for investors and how the market perceives the company. Most trust litigation ends up settling in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n

In separate statements on Monday, News Corp and Fox said their boards of directors welcome the resolution and believe the \u201cleadership, vision and management by the Company\u2019s Chair, Lachlan Murdoch, will continue to be important to guiding the Company\u2019s strategy and success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shares of Fox fell 2% in after-hours trading on Monday following the news, while shares of News Corp. were down 1.6%. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"President\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Murdochs have resolved their years-long legal battle over the family\u2019s trust, which holds control to the future…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,58792,4176,58793,58794,58795,58796,17105,4174,4175,58797,58798,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-123678","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-elisabeth-murdoch","10":"tag-finance","11":"tag-fox-corporation","12":"tag-james-murdoch","13":"tag-lachlan-murdoch","14":"tag-murdoch-family-trust","15":"tag-news-corporation","16":"tag-personal-finance","17":"tag-personalfinance","18":"tag-prudence-macleod","19":"tag-rupert-murdoch","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}