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Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the globalmedia conglomerate News Corp, is giving $100 million in stock to each of his six children, according to regulatory filings and a company spokesman.
Murdoch's family trust distributed 4.4 million non-voting shares in the company to each of his children, including his two youngest, Grace and Chloe, who are 5 and 3, respectively. The stock for those two is being held in a trust, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The other children all received equal-sized disbursements of stock, according to company spokesman Andrew Butcher, who said the distributions were being made as part of the family's financial planning.
Murdoch, who is 75, has said he would like to leave control of News Corp. within his family. However, his 35-year-old son Lachlan left the company in 2005 and moved to Australia, though he remains on the board. James, who is 34, is the head of British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC, in which News Corp. owns a stake of about 38 per cent. Murdoch 's two older daughters, Prudence and Elisabeth, do not have roles with News Corp. Since the distributions are being made in non-voting shares, they do not affect Murdoch 's control of the company, which he exercises through a 30 per cent voting stake held via News Corp.'s voting shares.
Murdoch 's voting power will increase to about 38 per cent once a deal is completed to exchange the company's stake in DirecTV Group Inc. with Liberty Media Corp., which holds a 19 per cent voting stake in News Corp.
News Corp. owns the Twentieth Century Fox movie and TV studio, the Fox broadcast network and Fox News Channel, the social networking website MySpace, several satellite broadcasters, the New York Post, and a large group of newspapers in the United Kingdom and Australia.
Even after distributing the total of 26.2 million non-voting shares to the six children - the equivalent of about 1 per cent of the company's total Murdoch's family trust will still own about 34 million shares of non-voting stock, worth about $800 million (million) at current prices.
The nearly 300 million shares of Class B voting stock in the trust are worth about $7.3 billion (billion) at current market prices. The voting shares rose 5 cents to $24.44 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange; the non-voting shares rose 12 cents to $23.32.
- REUTERS
