Rupert Murdoch loses bid to change family trust

Key Takeaways

• A Nevada commissioner ruled that Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch acted in “bad faith” when they tried to grant exclusive control of the family trust to Lachlan, which would have locked out the three other children who were set to get equal voting shares upon their father’s death.
  
• A lawyer for Rupert Murdoch, Adam Streisand, told the Times they intend to appeal the ruling. The succession drama of the Murdoch family—which had an estimated net worth of $22.5 billion as of Monday—took center stage in September when the family began to battle it out in court over Murdoch’s petition to change his will.
  
• Murdoch, 93, was originally set to grant equal control of his empire, which includes News Corp. and Fox Corp., to his four oldest children (Lachlan, 53, James, 51, Elisabeth, 56, and Prudence, 66) and equal financial shares to those four plus his two other children, Grace, 23, and Chloe, 21.
  
• But last year he petitioned to grant exclusive control of the family trust to Lachlan, arguing that giving him sole control was the only way to maintain the conservative editorial bent of his media outlets, which he said is what would protect their commercial value in the long run.
  
• Court documents suggested Murdoch was worried his other children, some of whom have spoken against the outlets’ conservative lean, could choose to “reorient” the “editorial policy and content” of some of his holdings.