What’s to become of Murdoch’s corporate orphans?

5 days ago 7

Opinion

September 10, 2025 — 2.52pm

Now the Murdoch succession fix has been inked, we can usher in a new chapter and introduce a new family WhatsApp group – the multibillionaire Murdoch sibling refugees.

The members of this unity ticket of Elisabeth, James and Prudence have freedom from any constraints imposed from their former roles as shareholders in the family trust that owns the controlling stake in News Corp and Fox Corp.

The Murdoch family multibillion-dollar feud has come to an end. Rupert Murdoch and his four eldest children (from left), Lachlan, Elisabeth, Prudence and James.

The $US1.1 billion ($1.7 billion) they will each receive from this week’s settlement for them is just a top-up from the payment of about $US1.7 billion in Disney shares they received when the empire sold assets to Disney in 2019. Murdoch’s two youngest children, Chloe and Grace from his marriage to Wendi Deng, received an equivalent payment from the Disney deal.

Sure, they won’t be Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg rich, but they will be billionaires at least two times over.

But this middle-aged trio – especially James and Elisabeth – don’t possess the obscurity gene, having been members of arguably the most talked about family outside the British royals.

While, other than Prudence, each of them has lived their lives in a large game of succession chess, they can now spend the remainder of it pursuing other goals.

So intriguing was the family drama that it formed the basis for an HBO hit drama, Succession.

For the public, tuning into the real-life soap opera family drama has been every bit as entertaining.

Over the decades, the epic tale has seen brother Lachlan pitted against brother James, and sister against both brothers, and at various times all at odds with their father, Rupert.

James, who at one point looked like he had front running, was embroiled in the UK hacking scandal and ultimately returned to the US where he was sent to the empire’s metaphorical gulag.

Elisabeth has been viewed by many to be the most commercially savvy and independently successful of the Murdoch siblings but was cursed with one too many X chromosomes to be considered an appropriate heir to the throne by her conservative father.

While, other than Prudence, each of them has lived their lives in a large game of succession chess, they can now spend the remainder of it pursuing other goals.

Having claimed the empire’s throne, Lachlan will be judged by the performance of Fox and News Corp and his ability to manage financial and political relationships spanning the US, Australia and the UK, following on from the mastery of his father.

Prudence (left), Elisabeth and James Murdoch outside a Nevada court in September, 2024

Most importantly, Lachlan will need to manage US President Donald Trump, whose kinship with Rupert has waxed and waned. Most recently this has been under intense stress thanks to Murdoch backing his Wall Street Journal’s publishing details of a lewd but decades old birthday card allegedly written by Trump to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This is a claim that Trump denies and is now suing the publisher and Rupert Murdoch.

The public is not privy to whether there are any clauses in the succession settlement agreement that may limit the empire’s orphans from competing with Fox or News Corp in media or from trash talking other family members.

In the past, James has been most vocal about his disdain for the media empire and what it stood for. In an explosive Atlantic article this year, James called his father a misogynist, questioned his brother’s business acumen and said that Fox was “lying” to its audience, having spoken in 2020 about the news outlets’ ongoing denial of the climate crisis.

Over the past six years, James has been chief executive of a private investment company he founded, Lupa Systems, and an active philanthropist alongside his wife, Kathryn Hufschmid.

Controversially, he is also on the board of Elon Musk’s Tesla.

Elisabeth Murdoch is a successful businesswoman in her own right, having founded production house Shine (creator of MasterChef), which she sold to her father in 2011, and more recently co-founded another production company, Sister, and is the co-founder and chair of Locksmith Animation. She is also heavily involved in philanthropy.

She has been married three times and has been no stranger to holding strong views, having famously declared at the height of the UK hacking scandal that James had “f---ed the company”.

The refugee Murdoch siblings have opinions, vast wealth and, thanks to their heritage, a large stage. It remains to be seen whether they can resist using it.

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.