‘You’ve blown a hole in the family’: The inside story of the Murdoch succession drama

It was at his home in Mayfair, London, in December 2023 that Rupert Murdoch collapsed and thought he was about to die. In fact, he had fainted.

His exhausting trip, to convince his eldest daughters that the plan to change the family trust and disenfranchise all the siblings other than Lachlan, who would have unfettered control of the two multibillion-dollar businesses, News Limited and Fox Corp, had failed sensationally – paving the path for the bitter legal battle in a closed Nevada courtroom last year. Which he lost.

Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Elena Zhukova Murdoch, in Reno in September.Credit: AP

“You are completely disenfranchising me and my siblings,” his daughter Elisabeth told him, according to a report in The New York Times detailing the inside story of the latest bitter brawl inside the family that inspired the TV drama Succession.

“You’ve blown a hole in the family,” Elisabeth said.

His desperate plea to eldest daughter Prudence also fell on deaf ears.

“These companies are my legacy,” he said, reading from his talking points. “I have put everything into them over my life.” He stressed their role as a “protector of the conservative voice in the English-speaking world”.

The Times said it had obtained thousands of pages of documents and the complete court transcript of a trial held behind closed doors.

The court documents show that Elisabeth accused her father and brother of “raping” the family company. “You think there’s going to be consensus with a gun to our head?”

Prudence also made a desperate appeal against changing the trust. “You already lost one son [James Murdoch]. And you could well lose two daughters over this,” she said.

They also show that James is not the only sibling railing against some of Lachlan’s conservative decisions, highlighting Prudence and Elisabeth’s reaction to the appointment of former prime minister Tony Abbott to the Fox board in 2023.

James, Elisabeth, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch in happier times.Credit: Getty Images

Prudence referred to Abbott as ghastly, while Elisabeth let it be known how she would have voted in this instance – if she controlled her stake in the trust.

“Oh my god, what a bad move. Definitely making it clear I am voting against that appointment.”

The trust currently allows Rupert to control all the family’s voting stock and has allowed the Murdochs to run the two businesses, with a combined market capitalisation of about $US27 billion ($43 billion), as their personal fiefdom despite owning a minority stake in both. It expires in 2030, according to the court documents obtained by the Times.

Murdoch’s control of the super shares that dominate voting rights at both Fox and News Corp gives the family about 40 per cent of votes, despite owning just 14 per cent of each.

But control of voting rights is only in Lachlan and Rupert’s hands while the 93-year-old patriarch is alive.

After his death, or in 2030, James, Prudence and Elisabeth are free to do as they wish. This includes deposing Lachlan and potentially ending the conservative political stance of assets like Fox News. Lachlan and Rupert argued that the potentially financially adverse impact of the latter was reason to change the so-called irrevocable trust in favour of his continuing control.

The Times report details just how nasty things got last year when Rupert and Lachlan tried to make this change.

An email in the court documents from Prudence’s husband Alasdair MacLeod was succinct about the problem facing Rupert and his impending mortality. “If anything should happen with R,” he wrote, the three siblings “can make a real nuisance of themselves”.

Prudence Murdoch (left) at the Nevada trial in September. Credit: Bloomberg

The seeds of the attempted coup against his own children were laid back in 2019, when Fox sold its movie studio assets to Disney for $US71 billion, and Rupert’s thoughts turned to control of the remaining news business and his troublesome son James, who could blow up its conservative stance.

Rupert encouraged Lachlan to use the $US2.1 billion he received from the sale to buy out his three elder siblings, and cement his control of the company – as Rupert did with his siblings decades earlier.

Lachlan’s offer to buy them out at a 50 per cent discount failed.

A note from Prudence’s husband, presented in court, quoted James: “If they do not get an agreement now, they are all f---ed.”

Rupert later proposed a plan to just buy James out, which his sisters rejected.

In 2023, Lachlan’s long-time consigliere, News Ltd executive Siobhan McKenna, hatched a bold new plan to change the terms of the “irrevocable trust” by arguing Lachlan’s control was in the best interests of all trust beneficiaries.

It triggered the most bitter internal battle that the family had experienced.

However, the legal brawl did do something unexpected: it actually managed to unify Rupert with his second wife, Anna, mother of Elisabeth, Lachlan and James.

It was Rupert’s divorce from Anna that led to the trust structure that gave equal power to the four eldest siblings after Rupert’s death. “You are the kingpin. You still hold the power,” she told him in a phone call as the discord played out among the siblings.

“Fox and our papers are the only faintly conservative voices against the monolithic liberal media. I believe maintaining this is vital to the future of the English-speaking world,” Rupert replied, noting that James and his wife Kathryn wanted to change that.

Anna’s reply confirmed that her conservative views remained in line with her former husband.

“I’m sure James and Kathryn are very comfortable in their own circle of like-minded woke friends. Fox is playing a huge and important role in calling out the idiocies that surround us. I sometimes fear that America is doomed because of the wrongheadedness of the cultural elites.”

Lachlan and Rupert have appealed against last year’s Nevada court decision that rejected their attempt to secure control of the trust.

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