Lachlan Murdoch has been crowned successor to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, it was announced on Thursday, bringing an end to years of speculation over which of his children will take on his multi-billion dollar portfolio.
The struggle to become News Corp’s reigning chief has never been clear-cut. Infighting among the Murdoch siblings has been well documented, but both James and Elisabeth Murdoch stepped away from the family business over a decade ago.
Despite carving her own path and pushing back at editorial decisions made under her father’s helm, Elisabeth was still frequently tipped as a front-runner in being the heir to the empire long after her departure in 2000.
Here’s what you need to know.
Who is Elisabeth Murdoch?
Elisabeth Murdoch, born in 1968 in Sydney, was the first of Rupert’s three children with his second wife, now named Anna Maria dePeyster.
After graduating from liberal arts school Vassar College, New York, she started her career at a local Utah radio station.
With just a few years of media experience under her belt, Elisabeth bought two California television stations, KSBW and KSBY, alongside her then-husband Elkin Pianim and with the help of a $35bn loan from her father. The couple’s management style was immediately called into question as they slashed staff but they boosted local programming and ad sales, before leaving with a $12m profit.
Just a year later, at the age of 27, Elisabeth became general manager of Mr Murdoch’s BSkyB network, but reportedly became frustrated by her slow progress at the company.
Speaking to The New Yorker in 2012, she described the atmosphere as “very boysy” and that the experience knocked her confidence. Her brother Lachlan was boosted from publisher of the New York Post to deputy chief operating officer at News Corp.
Elisabeth resigned from BSkyB in 2000, three years after she initially wanted to exit from the media group, having held off as she believed her father would feel she had “failed”, she told the The New Yorker.
Now 31 and planning her third child with then-partner, PR executive and great-grandson of Sigmund Freud, Matthew Freud, Elisabeth announced that she wanted to break into film and television, setting up her own production company, Shine, in London in 2001.
“I want to do films, television, and new media. There are huge opportunities out there at the moment,” she told The Times.
Shine sold dozens of dramas to Channel 4, ITV, and the BBC, including Ashes to Ashes and Masterchef, of which she was an executive producer. But in February 2011, Elisabeth joined News Corp after her father completed a $663m (around £520m) buyout of the company. Shareholders sued the company over the decision, accusing Mr Murdoch of “paying for nepotism.”
In 2012, Elisabeth announced at the Edinburgh Film Festival that she was dropping out of the competition with her siblings for the top job of becoming News Corp’s chairman, saying that she harbored “absolutely no ambition for the job”.
She had already admitted to the press that she had publicly lobbied for her brother, James, to be demoted at the family’s media empire in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, a day after she publicly criticised him over his approach to business.
She switched her focus to philanthropy in 2015, setting up the Freeland Foundation to support access to careers and education in the arts, and pledging $100m in shares from Disney.
She married her third husband, artist Keith Tyson, in 2017 and pocketed an additional $200bn from Murdoch’s sale of Disney and multiple Fox assets.
In the same year, she started a new venture, setting up the production company Sister, which has been behind hit television series Broadchurch and Chornobyl.