The Murdoch family, which has spent the better part of two decades dividing and subdividing its media empire like a particularly complicated estate settlement, may be preparing to put some of the pieces back together.
Fox Corp. is considering another attempt to merge with News Corp., according to a court document from June that was recently made public. An attorney for Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox Corp., told the court that a recombination of the two companies is "something that still could happen in the future."
Representatives for Fox Corp. did not respond to inquiries by press time. (One imagines the company's communications staff has a form letter for questions about corporate restructuring by now.)
The two companies have been separated since 2013, when Rupert Murdoch, the longtime founder and chief executive of what was then 20th Century Fox, split his holdings into 21st Century Fox, which housed the entertainment and broadcasting operations, and News Corp., which took the publishing assets including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post.
The Murdochs attempted a reunion in 2023, but institutional investors and certain family members objected, arguing that recombining the companies would damage shareholder value on both sides. The deal collapsed.
Since the original split, the Fox side of the ledger has grown considerably smaller. In 2019, the Walt Disney Company paid $71.3 billion for much of 21st Century Fox, including its movie studio, the FX networks and a 30 percent stake in Hulu. What remained became Fox Corp., a leaner enterprise built around Fox News, the Fox broadcast network and Fox Sports.
More recently, Fox Corp. agreed to acquire Roku, the streaming platform, for $22 billion — a deal that would give the company access to roughly 100 million monthly active users in the United States.
Whether a second attempt at remarriage would proceed any more smoothly than the first remains, as the lawyers say, something that could happen in the future.
Original story published in MediaPost: "Fox Corp.-News Corp May Re-Merge - Again"