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Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from wife Wendi Deng Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from wife Wendi Deng
(about 1 hour later)
News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch has filed for divorce from wife Wendi Deng Murdoch, the mother of his two youngest children and a woman seen as a key player in the media empire. Fourteen years ago almost to the day, Rupert Murdoch married Wendi Deng. On Thursday, the couple shocked most in the media world as they confirmed they have filed for divorce.
The news, first reported by Deadline Hollywood and confirmed by a spokesman, brings to an end the media mogul's third marriage.
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/>Murdoch, 82, met Deng, 44, at a company party in Hong Kong in 1997. They were married two years later, less than a month after his divorce from ex-wife Anna was finalised after 32 years of marriage. 		The media's most powerful couple married on 25 June 1999 in a twilight ceremony on board Murdoch's garland-bedecked yacht, the Morning Glory, in New York Harbor. Welsh singing star Charlotte Church (who it later emerged waived a £100,000 fee) serenaded the couple with a trio of ballads. Deng, now 44, went on to bear him two children, shake up his wardrobe and join a rarified social circle of Hollywood celebrities and chief executives.
The couple are believed to have filed for joint custody of their children but there are no details of any settlement. Murdoch has cited an irretrievable breakdown in marriage for more than six months as the reason for the divorce. Yet, although there had been periodic rumours of martial difficulties, the announcement of the end of his third marriage caught watchers of the 82-year-old media mogul by surprise. Wendi Murdoch had been seen as a key player in the News Corp empire, a woman who was more than a match for the Game of Thrones plotting that dominates the media family.
Murdoch is worth an estimated $11.2bn, according to Forbes magazine. His last divorce, from Anna Murdoch, cost $1.7bn including $100m in cash. "I was totally surprised," said Michael Wolff, Murdoch's biographer and author of The Man Who Owns The News. "Everyone is trying to figure it out."
The couple signed a pre-nuptial agreement and two further agreements in 2002 and 2004. Wendi Murdoch has been a key player in News Corp's push into China and is chief of strategy for MySpace's China operation. He described Deng as the "most significant figure in the closing chapters of Rupert's life" and said she had changed his politics, his friends, his relationship with his family and even the way he dresses. "She has had an enormous impact on his life," said Wolff.
Deng, born in China and educated at Yale, has been credited with making over her mogul partner, introducing him to a younger, more tech-savvy set of friends including the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Deng became internationally famous (and was dubbed the "Tiger Wife") in July 2011 after leaping to block an attack by protester Jonathan May-Bowles, who threw a pie at her husband during a select committee hearing at Westminster into the News International phone-hacking scandal.
She became internationally famous after leaping to block an attack in 2011 by protester Jonathan May-Bowles, who threw a pie at her husband during a British parliamentary committee hearing into the News International phone-hacking scandal. "I think he genuinely loved her," said Wolff. "Everyone is wondering what went wrong."
Murdoch had met Deng on a business trip to China – and their union was at one point taken to be a sign of the mogul's determination to break into the country. However, News Corp did not expand far into China, and eventually his marriage too turned sour: in his divorce filing released on Wednesday, Murdoch's lawyers said that "relationship between husband and wife had broken down irretrievably".
The split came on the same day as another moment of epochal change for Murdoch. The News Corporation empire that he built from a single newspaper in Adelaide is to be split in two and Wednesday was the day that the company set out the timetable for trading to begin in the two new companies – one focused on his Fox film and television stations and a second, bearing the News Corp name, housing his newspapers, including the Sun and the Times.
That split came about after Murdoch's newspaper business was shattered by the hacking scandal that rocked his empire and led to the arrest of some of his closest allies and his public humiliation. But announcing the separation now, was, it was suggested, timed to ensure that investors were abreast of the financial implications.
Murdoch is worth an estimated $11.2bn, according to Forbes magazine, and will control a 30% bloc of voting shares in the two successor companies. Deng herself is likely only to benefit in a limited – but still sizeable – way from their separation: the couple signed a prenuptial agreement and two further agreements in 2002 and 2004.
That, though, may have reflected the fact that the media mogul had already made one of the largest known divorce settlements. Anna Murdoch, his second wife of 32 years, received a $1.7bn divorce settlement, including $100m in cash. It was the second most costly divorce on record after that of French billionaire Alec Wildenstein and his wife Jocelyn.
However, there will be financial benefits for Deng's family in the future, which could create complications for the family's long-term control of his newspapers and television stations.
Each of Murdoch's six children have an equal economic interest in the family trust that controls the all-important bloc of shares – Prudence MacLeod, the only daughter from his first, short marriage to Patricia Booker, is the oldest, but the best known are Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, children from his 32-year union to Anna Murdoch.
Deng and Murdoch had two daughters – Grace, 11, whose godfather is Tony Blair, and Chloe, nine, who, like Grace, was baptised on the banks of the river Jordan, at the spot where Jesus was said to have undergone the same ceremony.
Also acting as godparents were two more of Wendi's friends – Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.
Deng had been a key player in News Corp's push into China and is chief of strategy for MySpace's China operation. The Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch owns, described her as News Corp's "de-facto diplomat" in China. But she does not sit on the board, as Anna once did.
News Corp insiders said the divorce would have no impact on the business.
But her influence can be seen throughout the company. The Yale-educated executive has been credited with making over her mogul partner, swapping out his staid suits for Steve Jobs-style turtlenecks.
Briefly involved with News Corp's ill-fated investment in social network MySpace, she also introduced Rupert to a younger, more tech-savvy set of friends including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and softened his politics.