[Single Life] Rupert Murdoch Back On The Market

percicles · Jun 13, 2013

How much poon damage can an octogenarian billionaire do on the bachelor circuit? Will he die alone?

Don't disapoint me BBS, I wan't mock OKCupid/Match.com profile photoshops on Rupert.

News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch Files For Divorce Which Won’t Effect News Corp Split

News Corp chairman/CEO Rupert Murdoch filed for divorce from wife Wendi Deng Murdoch this morning in New York State Supreme Court, Deadline learned at 9 AM. The divorce will not impact Rupert Murdoch’s mega-media holdings, according to insiders, and was deliberately announced for maximum transparency before News Corp spins off its publishing assets into a separately traded company by June 28th. (Murdoch will control both of these entities.) Today’s news comes despite numerous denials for months by PR man Steven Rubenstein and News Corp PR woman Julie Henderson to me as recently as April and May. (“We get this phone call once every 3-6 months,” Rubenstein and Henderson said at the time, pointing to the fact that Wendi and Rupert had recently hosted a dinner at their home for Oscar-winning Twentieth Century Fox director Ang Lee and were going away together on Spring Break.) But legal sources insisted to Deadline that the Murdochs’ divorce was being planned at the time that a change in Wendi’s behavior towards Rupert was observed during the Academy Awards in February and after. ”She was snippy with him during Oscar weekend, and she’s really impatient with him these days,” a source told Deadline at the time. Then I received a call from an insider telling me, “Now I’m hearing it might be true. Call me,” On the heels of that, for the first time, not even Murdoch’s reps were denying yet another rift between Rupert and Wendi, saying to me there had been marriage trouble but stressing ”it feels like its past whatever that was.” And a source who had dinner with them shortly after in NYC told me they were “fine. They’re two people who move a lot in different directions. I don’t know if it’s the marriage I’d want.” Today I’m told by insiders that, at that time, there were still no divorce proceedings underway so the denials were issued in good faith. “The divorce happened very quickly,” an insider told me today.

The couple met in 1997, at a company party in Hong Kong. They married in 1999, less than a month after his divorce from ex-wife Anna Maria Torv Murdoch was finalized. Wendi is perhaps most vividly and fondly remembered by the general public for standing up for her husband and clocking Jonathan May-Bowles after he threw a pie at Murdoch during his highly publicized testimony before a British parliamentary committee in connection with the News International phone-hacking scandal.

Media moguls routinely divorce, but this one is different because of possible impact on the Murdoch family succession issue vis a vis News Corp given his age of 82. Rupert and Wendi were married on his yacht in New York Harbor in June 1999 after Murdoch’s ex-wife, received $1.7 billion — $110 million in cash — in what was called the “most expensive” divorce settlement in history. Although at first they broke up amicably after 30 years together, Anna (who has since remarried) was determined to give Murdoch’s older children the right to approve any change in the family trust that controls News Corp., ensuring that they could not be pushed aside for any new children. As part of the divorce from Anna, Rupert agreed that his existing children would inherit control of News Corp via the family trust. Wendi wanted that changed after giving birth to their two daughters, Grace and Chloe. But Rupert punted, actually startling Wendi by disclosing in a 2006 Charlie Rose TV interview that Deng’s girls would not have voting rights in his family trust. He said they’d have an equal economic stake, but the decision-making would be left to his other children: Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James. “The fight that happened between Rupert and Wendi, after the program aired, is News Corp legend,” author Michael Wolff said in his book The Man Who Owns The News: Inside The Secret World Of Rupert Murdoch.

Since then, news reports noted that Wendi emerged with her own independent career and immersed herself in a social circle that includes David Geffen, Larry Ellison, Tony Blair, Nicole Kidman and Bono “one that is often free of her husband’s presence,” to quote The New York Times. With the wife of former MGM exec Harry Sloan, Wendi co-produced the 2011 film Snow Flower And The Secret Fan, which was released by News Corp’s Fox Searchlight. (It generated $11.3M in global ticket sales, including $1.3M from domestic theaters.)

The marriage is Rupert’s third, and Wendi’s second. The Wall Street Journal disclosed in a controversial front page article in 2000, before Murdoch bought it, that she met her first husband in 1988 when she moved to Los Angeles to learn English. She lived with Jake and Joyce Cherry, and broke up their marriage by having an affair with Jake. She married him in 1990, but they divorced after two years and seven months. “That was seven months longer than what was required for Deng to obtain a green card, allowing her
permanently to live and work in the U.S. as a resident alien,” the paper noted. “Cherry says he and Deng actually lived together for ‘four to five months, at the most.’” MORE

http://www.deadline.com/2013/06/rupert-murdoch-files-for-divorce/
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JayZ750 · Jun 13, 2013

Yung-T · Jun 13, 2013

Billionaire with few years left to live huh....

*puts on wig and lipstick*

MoonDogg · Jun 13, 2013

Yung-T said: ↑

Billionaire with few years left to live huh....

*puts on wig and lipstick*
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You're doing it wrong, dude. Set your sights on the ex....she won't have as much money, but you probably won't have to wear the wig.

boomboom · Jun 13, 2013

hooroo · Jun 13, 2013

Yung-T said: ↑

Billionaire with few years left to live huh....

*puts on wig and lipstick*
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Good luck, he's frugal and his assets aren't in his name for tax purposes :grin:

jo mama · Jun 13, 2013

JayZ750 said: ↑

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Yung-T · Jun 13, 2013

MoonDogg said: ↑

You're doing it wrong, dude. Set your sights on the ex....she won't have as much money, but you probably won't have to wear the wig.
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Why would she choose me, breh? She's hot and rich, she can have any guy.

I like my chances with Rupert though, his eyes are not what they used to be.

MoonDogg · Jun 13, 2013

Yung-T said: ↑

Why would she choose me, breh? She's hot and rich, she can have any guy.

I like my chances with Rupert though, his eyes are not what they used to be.
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It's all up to you breh. You can either go for the big money trim and probably lose(but it would be worth a shot) or you can wake up with that semen taste in your mouth in the morning.

rocketsjudoka · Jun 13, 2013

Let's see broke up a marriage then divorced not long after getting a green card.
Married a billionaire and now divorcing after she becomes a mover and shaker in high society social circles.

I ain't saying she's a gold digger but..

TheRealist137 · Jun 13, 2013

rocketsjudoka said: ↑

Let's see broke up a marriage then divorced not long after getting a green card.
Married a billionaire and now divorcing after she becomes a mover and shaker in high society social circles.

I ain't saying she's a gold digger but..
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yep, she's not even that hot...

TMac'n · Jun 13, 2013

TheRealist137 said: ↑

yep, she's not even that hot...
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I'd put it in

gamer4Life · Jun 13, 2013

MoonDogg said: ↑

It's all up to you breh. You can either go for the big money trim and probably lose(but it would be worth a shot) or you can wake up with that semen taste in your mouth in the morning.
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If it's just a trickle, I can live with that.

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[Single Life] Rupert Murdoch Back On The Market

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boomboom I GOT '99 PROBLEMS

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