Rupert Murdoch is stepping back from his media empire at the age of 92. The Australian business mogul will step down as chairman of the board at both News Corp and Fox at their annual general meetings next month. He will instead take on the role of chairman emeritus at the companies.
Rupert’s son Lachlan will become News Corp’s sole chair and continue as executive chairman and chief executive of Fox.
In a message to employees, Rupert Murdoch told them the companies were “in robust health, as am I”, and he is looking forward to the future. He wrote, “Our companies are in robust health, as am I. Our opportunities far exceed our commercial challenges.”
Rupert Murdoch took over his father’s newspaper business in Australia in 1954 and gradually expanded to the US and UK with the acquisition of titles including The Sun, News of the World, The Times, New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
He also set up Sky, which is now owned by Comcast, and became a naturalized US citizen in 1985 in order to satisfy the legal of TV station ownership in America so he could buy a stake in 20th Century Fox, later going on to buy out the whole company and the Metromedia television stations, forming what became the Fox Broadcasting Company.
