After 14 Years of Marriage, Murdoch Seeks Divorce

A spokeswoman for Mr. Murdoch’s media company, News Corporation, confirmed that Mr. Murdoch had made the filing, which said that the “relationship between husband and wife has broken down irretrievably.”

Mrs. Murdoch was informed in advance of Mr. Murdoch’s decision, according to a person close to the family. Ira E. Garr of the law firm Garr Silpe is representing Mr. Murdoch in the divorce.

The filing — which was first reported by Deadline Hollywood — comes after years of whispered comments that the couple had largely grown apart, pursuing separate interests, often from different coasts.

Mr. Murdoch, 82, first met Wendi Deng, 44, on a business trip to China when she was a young executive at his company’s Star TV division in Hong Kong. They wed in front of 82 guests in 1999 aboard Mr. Murdoch’s 155-foot yacht, the Morning Glory, in New York Harbor.

A year before they were married, Mr. Murdoch left his wife, Anna, to whom he had been married for 31 years. That divorce is reported to have cost Mr. Murdoch $1.7 billion, including $110 million in cash. He and Anna had three children — Lachlan, James and Elisabeth. Mr. Murdoch divorced his first wife, Patricia, in 1967. They had one daughter, Prudence.

The divorce from Wendi Murdoch and decisions about the place the couple’s daughters, Grace, 11, and Chloe, 9, will have in Mr. Murdoch’s media empire are expected to be contentious.

In 2006, a battle broke out when Mr. Murdoch said in a TV interview with Charlie Rose that Grace and Chloe would have an equal economic interest in the family’s trust, but would not have the same voting rights as his children from his previous two marriages. The couple worked out a more mutually acceptable agreement.

In recent years, Mrs. Murdoch, who was born to humble beginnings as Deng Wen Di in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, has taken on a wider range of professional endeavors, including producing the movie “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.” The movie was released by News Corporation’s Fox Searchlight division in July 2011 and was eclipsed when news surfaced that Mr. Murdoch’s British tabloid News of the World tabloid had hacked into the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a kidnapped and murdered teenager.

Mrs. Murdoch became a viral sensation during the phone hacking crisis when Mr. Murdoch testified in front of a British parliamentary subcommittee about the scandal. Wearing a pink blazer, Mrs. Murdoch, a former volleyball player, instinctively lurched toward a protester to protect her husband from a pie attack.

The News Corporation spokeswoman said the divorce would have no impact on the company. On June 28, the corporation will complete the split of its publishing and entertainment assets into two separate companies, to be called News Corp and 21st Century Fox, respectively.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/business/media/rupert-murdoch-files-for-divorce-after-14-years-of-marriage.html?partner=rss&emc=rss