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Media|Murdochs Reach Deal to Resolve Succession Fight
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/business/media/murdoch-family-trust-succession-deal.html
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Lachlan Murdoch will take control of a new family trust in a deal worth $3.3 billion, ensuring that his father’s media empire will retain its conservative slant.
Sept. 8, 2025, 4:14 p.m. ET
The Murdoch family’s epic, decades-long succession battle has reached a multibillion-dollar finale.
Lachlan Murdoch has completed an agreement to secure control of his family’s sprawling media empire for decades to come, the family announced on Monday. The deal ensures that the empire’s various outlets, including Fox News, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, will remain conservative after his father Rupert’s death. It is valued at $3.3 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiations.
The deal comes months after Rupert and Lachlan’s audacious bid to unilaterally change the terms of the Murdoch family’s irrevocable trust and disenfranchise Lachlan’s oldest siblings, Prue, Liz and James. The bid initially failed in court, but ultimately brought the two sides to the negotiating table.
The agreement gives the 94-year-old Rupert, who built a single Australian newspaper into the world’s most powerful media empire, what he has long sought — to preserve what he has called the “protector of the conservative voice in the English-speaking world” under the leadership of his chosen heir, Lachlan.
Under the terms of the deal, Lachlan’s three oldest siblings will receive $1.1 billion each for all their shares in the empire, according to the person with knowledge of the negotiations. Those shares are currently held in the existing family trust, which will be dissolved. This amounts to roughly 80 percent of the value of their stock at the close of trading Friday.
As part of the agreement, the ongoing litigation between Rupert and Lachlan, 54, and the three siblings over the trust will end. A new Murdoch family trust will be created that will include Lachlan and his two younger sisters, Grace and Chloe. That trust will hold the controlling stake in the two main Murdoch media companies, Fox Corporation and News Corp.
The deal is complicated, involving loans, holding companies and stock sales. The details were finalized late last week.
