World's top ten divorce settlements (LIST)

1. Rupert and Anna Murdoch – $1.7 billion

Rupert married Anna in the 1960s, with the pair remaining together for 32 years, having three children. They split amicably in 1998. The divorce was finalized in June 1999 when he agreed to let her leave with $1.7 billion. 17 days later he married Wendi Deng.

2. Adnan and Soraya Khashoggi – $874 million

Saudi businessman Adnan made his money as an international arms dealer for the Saudi royal family. He then launched his company Triad, based in Switzerland, owning banks hotels and real estate across the world. He married Soraya in 1961. Their 1982 divorce resulted in an estimated $874 million settlement.

3. Craig and Wendy McCaw – $460 million

Craig made his money turning a failing TV cable service into a successful business, eventually selling for $755 million. In 1981 he then acquired cellular phone licenses, eventually selling to phone company AT&T for approximately $12 billion, becoming its largest single shareholder.

The pair met at Stanford University when she tutored him, with them marrying in 1974. In 1995 divorce proceedings were initiated with Wendy wanting her share to support a $200,000 a month lifestyle.


Read the full list

Read More

News Corp plans a 'digital newspaper' - "We'll have young people reading newspapers"

News Corporation, the media and information behemoth governed by newspaper overlord Rupert Murdoch, is reportedly planning a 'digital newspaper' aimed at owners of tablet computers like Apple's new iPad, which is already transforming the small market that already exists for tablet-based computing.

The company, which owns such titles as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, is looking to compete directly with more liberal and upmarket titles such as the New York Times - especially as one of the company's more controversial properties, cable channel Fox News, continues to spew more embarrassingly conservative propaganda.

Murdoch seemed elated about the project in the company's recent conference call. "We'll have young people reading newspapers," the septuagenerian (near octogenarian) said. "It's a real game changer in the presentation of news."

Murdoch and his company have been at the centre of the media world's fight to have newspapers survive in the digital age. He fought a rather public battle with internet search giant Google over concerns regarding use of newspaper content in online aggregation services and has been an avid public promoter of the subscription-based web revenue model. 

Another News Corp company, News International - which owns the trashy tabloid The Sun, and the even less earnest News of the World - purchased a company which was developing its own e-reader device designed specifically for reading newspapers. 

Could this all be part of Murdoch's grand strategy?

The new digital newspaper will cater to a younger, more engaged audience. It has been said that the stories included in the publication will be shorter, 'snappier' and more suited to a digital-centric media metabolism. 

Read More

Is Rupert Murdoch looking to buy a baseball team?

The New York Post, a publication owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, has reported that its parent company is weighing up a bid on the bankrupt Texas Rangers, a team that may fetch some $400 million, the Post reports.

This isn't the first foray the media giant has made into the professional sports world, though. The company owned the LA Dodgers up until 2004 and is considering making a bid at Wednesday's bankruptcy court auction.


"It is kind of silly not to buy them," one source said. [New York Post]

Read More

Ol' Rupe wants White House to pay up on Wall Street Journal coverage

Rupert Murdoch's newly acquired Wall Street Journal may offer the world's greatest coverage of the banana museum industry, but nobody would think of paying $600,000 for such timely information.

That won't stop Murdoch, who has just jacked up the price his company is charging the White House to clip news from the paper, Politico reports.

It's unclear how Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation - WSJ's parent company - arrived at the figure of $600,000.

"But copyright laws," reports Politico, "would prevent the news-clipping service from widely disseminating Wall Street Journal articles without the parent company''s permission. [Politico]

Read More

Rupert Murdoch loves Steve Jobs as much as you do

In an interview with his noise channel, media baron Rupert Murdoch professed his profound love for Apple, Steve Jobs and the iPad. He also took time to note that the laptop is dead, and echo the belief of the tech industry on the fate of newspapers. [Via Fox News]

Read More

Ol' Rupe' takes the time to blast Obama

The CEO of the evil media empire, News Corporation, has always been vocal about his views on politics (watch Fox News if you're unsure about what I mean) and is never one to pass up an opportunity to share his abundant political wisdom with the world.

As well as praising the iPad, as Bloomberg Businessweek reports, the newspaper mogul took time to call President Obama 'irresponsible' at the opening of The New York Forum yesterday.

Let's not forget that this is the same man that once portrayed the president as a racist, and once published a cartoon that compared him to an ape. That particular cartoon didn't go down so well in the liberal circles that Murdoch is now associated with, by the way.

Read More

News Corporation buys an e-reader manufacturer

Could this be the future of the newspaper? Rupert Murdoch has said before that the newspaper of the future will be electronic and will also update every hour or so.

Is this the first step to the realization of his vision?

Perhaps, for today News Corporation has purchased a fledgling young startup, named Skiff, that makes e-readers designed specifically for the newspaper market.
[See a Guardian article on the sale]

Read More

Rupert Murdoch sets out to block Google

Rupert Murdoch, the powerful media mogul who claimed just over a year ago that he would block search engines like Google, who send news websites mountains of traffic every week, from indexing their content.

Murdoch, who owns the Times and the Sunday Times in London, has been looking to introduce pay-walls on all of his newspapers' websites, as the Wall Street Journal has done and the New York Times plans to this year.

The Times' website will not allow Google or other search engines to index the content, and will instead only allow them to index their home pages.

Plans include a two pound-a-week charge for users who wish to read the paper. This charge, we are told, will auto-renew, unlike a daily fee.

Read More