March 28, 2024

James Murdoch Resigns From News Corp

James Murdoch was the chief executive of 21st Century Fox from 2015 until it was sold to Disney, and he netted $2 billion from the sale. He opened his own investment firm and named it Lupa Systems. (In Roman mythology, Lupa is the wolf goddess who nurtured Romulus and Remus, the twin brothers who became the founders of Rome.)

The firm specializes in early stage start-ups and has focused on sustainability projects, extending efforts that Mr. Murdoch made at Sky, the European satellite giant that was formerly part of the Murdoch empire, and his financial support of the National Geographic Society’s endowment fund.

Mr. Murdoch has also taken a starkly different tack with his media investments. In October, he bought a small stake in Vice Media, the irreverent — and decidedly liberal — news brand focused on youth and entertainment. He has been less interested in traditional media businesses.

In August, Mr. Murdoch led a consortium of investors to buy a controlling stake in Tribeca Enterprises, which owns the Tribeca Film Festival as well as a production studio. He also put money into Artists, Writers Artisans, a new comics publisher founded by former Marvel executives.

In 2011, Mr. Murdoch was a chief figure in the phone hacking scandal that led to the closure of News of the World, one of the Murdochs’ flagship properties, and strained his relationship with his father. At the time, Mr. Murdoch was in charge of the family’s holdings across Europe, including the British newspapers that were behind the hacks.

Called before a Parliamentary committee investigating the matter, he was confronted with an email that appeared to show his knowledge of the hacking; Mr. Murdoch said he had not read the entire email chain. The committee chided James and his father for “willful blindness” about the company’s behavior.

The scandal dinged Mr. Murdoch’s credibility in London, and he soon relocated to New York to help run his father’s businesses there, where he focused on the Fox television empire and made investments in digital ad technology.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/business/media/james-murdoch-resigns-news-corp.html

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