The Rupert-Anna Murdoch divorce gets a fresh airing in the latest issue of New York
magazine – and it’s dirty washing all round. “The separation was, in
fact, a mutual idea, but hardly amicable,” says the magazine:

“I wanted to save my marriage at all costs,” Anna recalls.
But Rupert, Anna was sure, had a girlfriend. (Rupert claimed the
girlfriend happened after the separation. “It’s a lie,” Anna said.)
Rupert, in any case, had moved on. He was no longer interested in Anna.
As if to punctuate that thought, he kicked her off the board. “[You’re]
an embarrassment to everyone else on the board,” she recalls him
saying. She formally resigned in person, walking out in tears, escorted
by Lachlan, a fellow director. “You don’t hurt people for your own
happiness,” was one of Anna’s parting thoughts.

The
magazine quotes Lachlan Murdoch as telling a colleague that Anna was
furious at Rupert – “she was fired up … she would have gone after my
dad for everything.” Instead, Anna “settled for the relatively modest
figure of about $200 million,” and in return “secured assurances on
control of the major portion of the assets – not for her but for her
kids. Anna was convinced by Rupert’s lawyers that he was setting aside
the trust for the four children – Anna’s three, plus Prudence, whom Anna
helped raise.”

And the magazine quotes Anna’s divorce attorney,
Daniel Jaffe, as saying that the divorce agreement “controls the
appointment of the trustees” to the AE Harris trust, which holds
28.5% of News Corp’s voting stock – the trust which “not only includes
most of the family assets but also is the key to its control of News
Corp.”

“According to the agreement, Rupert gets four votes; the
four adult children receive one vote each. When Rupert dies, his votes
disappear. The kids then control the assets and, also, the empire. It
was an arrangement that Rupert could go for. He certainly wanted his
kids to inherit News Corp, even if the agreement, technically, put the
majority of his resources beyond his control. ‘All I know is that we
have something set that cannot be touched about where the power and the
shares lie in the family trust’,” said Anna in an unpublished portion
of her interview with David Leser in the Australian Women’s Weekly in
August 2001.

Rupert’s view of the trust is “uncompromising,”
says the magazine – “‘The trust was conceived by me and created by me
and all the kids will have all the votes,’ he told a friend.”

Then, enter Wendi Deng, whose job, according to New York,
is to “remind Rupert of his vitality.” According to the magazine she
“watches Rupert’s diet, supervises his health, and sometimes teases
him. She’s not the meek sort – Rupert doesn’t go for meek. “Are you going
deaf, old man?” a colleague heard her say to Rupert. It was a tender if
pointed jab.“

But then comes the inheritance crunch:

A year ago, Rupert came to his adult children with a
proposal for changing the terms of the trust that Anna felt she had
tied up. “All my children will be treated equally” was the public
version of Rupert’s idea. That was often interpreted to mean that
Rupert wanted his two youngest girls to share in his wealth. But Rupert
also insisted that his toddlers have votes in the trust.

…And
yet, it was impossible for the kids to not see this proposed change as
a land grab and, rightly or wrongly, to discern in it the hand of
Wendi. “If you see your dad marry a young girl, and then you see the
young girl being reasonably aggressive toward the family assets, no-one
human is not going to [question that],” explains one family friend.

Even
Lachlan wondered who would actually have control of the trust. When
Rupert dies, would Wendi then, through her children, control a third of
the trust? “My mother definitely gave up something for us,” Lachlan
felt. “We don’t want to give up something our mother gave up for us.”

The
conflict laid out battle lines, for anyone who wanted to battle: Wendi
against Anna, one generation of Rupert’s kids against another. And the
conflict put Lachlan, the oldest son, in an uncomfortable position with
his father. “Wendi gets upset about it,” he knew. But the kids assumed
that Rupert voiced Wendi’s wishes. Lachlan talked of a compromise; this
is not a family that enjoys intramural conflict. Still, a difficult
pass is ahead. “I’m not going to lie to you,” Lachlan told one
colleague. “It’s an issue.”