Australian-American media propeitor who, as owner of the company News Corp, owns hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world. With a net worth of US$21.7 billion as of 2 March 2022, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the USA and the 71st richest in the world.
After journalistic experience in London in 1962, he took over the family’s small newspaper and parlayed a barely profitable enterprise into several successful papers within two years. In 1981 he paid $27 million for the two-century old London Times, becoming a self-made tycoon. His early media holdings included more than 80 publications on three continents and the American FOX television network. By 1998, his News Corp beamed Fox TV and movies worldwide and published an array of newspapers, magazines and books, estimated to be worth $5.3 billion.
After living in Australia and England, he became a naturalized American citizen on 5 September 1985. He married the first time on 1 March 1956 and the second time, to Anna Torv, on 28 March 1967.
Unable to slow his incessant globe-trotting and deal making, and disinterested in the cultural events and domestic life that his wife offered, they separated in May 1988. As she is discreet and private, and a devout Catholic, it was a shock when she filed for divorce two months later.
Murdoch has a daughter from his first marriage, Prudence, plus three kids with Anna. Their oldest son, Lachlan, ran Australian operations of the family business and became a top executive. Elisabeth was general manager of the British satellite-TV branch and James became deputy publisher of the New York Post.
Murdoch was married for the third time on 25 June 1999, just 17 days after his divorce from wife number two, Anna, to his 36-year younger bride, former employee Wendi Dang, 30, aboard his yacht in New York Harbor. In May 2000, Murdoch began a course of radiation treatment for prostate cancer. A year later they announced that Wendi was expecting their first child. Their daughter Grace Helen was born to Murdoch, 70, and Deng, 33 “the evening” of 19 November 2001 at an undisclosed New York hospital. On 17 July 2003, the 72-year-old media mogul and his 35-year-old wife welcomed their second child, Chloe, born in New York City. On 13 June 2013 Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in New York City.
The media mogul came under fire in July 2011 when news reports erupted of deleterious activities at his flagship English news outfit, News of the World. Employees of the news outlet reportedly had hacked into emails and voice mails of crime and terrorism victims, celebrities and members of the Royal Family. Murdoch canceled an impending merger with another large news outlet and shut down News of the World. On 16 and 17 July 2011, Murdoch’s News International published two full-page apologies in many of Britain’s national newspapers. Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the US. On 21 July 2012, he resigned as a director of News International.
On 4 March 2016, Murdoch, a week short of his 85th birthday, and 59-year-old former model Jerry Hall were married in London. Hall filed for divorce on 1 July 2022 citing irreconcilable differences; the divorce was finalised in August 2022.
During Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations in 2023, Murdoch, 91, who is quarter Irish, proposed to his partner, Ann Lesley Smith. The engaged couple first met at an event that they both attended in September 2022. They reportedly split later in 2023.
Link to Wikipedia biography