Billionaire Rupert Murdoch and model Jerry Hall have finalized their divorce after six years of marriage, Hall’s lawyer says.
Key points:
Murdoch is worth more than $US17 billion ($24 billion), according to Forbes
The couple reportedly signed a prenuptial agreement
It means the separation is unlikely to alter the ownership structure of businesses Murdoch holds stakes in
It was the fourth divorce for 91-year-old Murdoch, who married Hall, 66, in London in March 2016.
“Jerry and Rupert Murdoch have finalized their divorce,” lawyer Judy Poller said.
“They remain good friends and wish each other the best for the future.”
Australian-born Murdoch owns newspapers around the world and is worth more than $US17 billion ($24 billion), according to Forbes.
The couple signed a prenuptial agreement, The New York Times reported in June. It means the separation is unlikely to alter the ownership structure of businesses in which Murdoch holds stakes.
Those businesses include the parent companies of Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.
Murdoch’s powerful global media empire also includes the New York Post, The Times of London and British tabloid The Sun.
Murdoch’s first wife was Patricia Booker, an Australian flight attendant he divorced in the late 1960s.
He and his second wife, Anna, a newspaper reporter, were together more than 30 years before divorcing in 1999.
His third marriage to Wendi Deng ended in 2013 amid media reports that she was romantically involved with Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair, who has denied any impropriety.
Hall, who was born in Texas, in the United States, was the longtime partner of Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, with whom she has four children.
The FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday was prompted by a tip to investigators about the possibility of additional classified documents at the Palm Beach club, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
CNN previously reported that investigators from the FBI and the DOJ met with Trump attorneys at Mar-a-Lago in June, seeking more information about classified material that had been taken to Florida after Trump departed the White House. Following that meeting, where investigators looked around the room where the documents were being stored, the Wall Street Journal reports that“someone familiar with the stored papers told investigators there may be still more classified documents at the private club” beyond what Trump turned over to the National Archives earlier this year.
CNN has not confirmed the WSJ report.
Monday’s search warrant execution pertained to both the handling of classified documents and the Presidential Records Act.
For months, investigators have been looking into how Trump handled material taken with him when he left the White House after the National Archives and Records Administration referred the case to the Justice Department earlier this year.
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The Monday search followed a belief from authorities that the former President or his team had not returned all the documents and other materials that were property of the government, according to a person familiar with the matter. There had been suspicion that Trump representatives were not being completely truthful with investigators, according to another person familiar with the matter.
The concern rose after the former President returned some 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives in January.
Before FBI agents arrived at Trump’s private club earlier this week and searched his residence, people around the former President had been under the impression that the probe into how he handled classified information had stalled, according to two sources familiar with the thinking.
It remains unclear why those around the former President believed the investigation had stalled, but in June, his attorneys received a letter from investigators asking them to preserve the remaining documents in his possession “until further notice,” one source told CNN.
The Mar-a-Lago search, which focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are located, marked a major escalation of the classified documents investigation. Federal agents removed boxes of material from the Palm Beach property. The Secret Service had about an hour heads up before the FBI executed the warrant, a source familiar with the situation told CNN.
The Wall Street Journal’s report comes amid increased pressure for the Justice Department to provide a public statement about the unprecedented move to search for a former President’s home.
It’s a story that’s got the makings of a best-seller — a billion-dollar deal, a court battle, and an endorsement from the King of Horror.
Penguin Random House, a publishing titan, is hoping to buy its rival Simon & Schuster in a mega-deal that would reshape the publishing industry.
But the Biden administration has sought to intervene through the US courts, with the Department of Justice (DOJ) suing to block the merger from happening.
Let’s get you up to speed on the court case that’s gripping the publishing industry.
What’s the story?
In 2020, German media giant Bertelsmann announced its plan for its Penguin Random House division to buy fellow publishing giant Simon & Schuster for $US2.17 billion from TV and film company ViacomCBS.
The merger would reduce the so-called Big Five of publishing — which also includes HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan — to four.
The announcement was not well received and drew intense scrutiny from government regulators.
The US Justice Department argues that the merger would hurt authors and, ultimately, readers as well.
Penguin Random House argues the combined publishers could turn out books more efficiently.(AP: Jenny Kane)
It says the deal would thwart competition and give Penguin Random House gigantic influence over which books are published in the US and beyond, not just how many authors are paid, giving consumers fewer books to choose from.
The new company, if approved, would be by far the biggest book-publishing entity in US history.
The Penguin Random House trial is widely seen as part of a growing DOJ trend during the Biden administration of taking a tougher stand on mergers in a bid to crack down on big business combinations.
Bertelsmann’s rival News Corp, which owns HarperCollins, also slammed the deal.
“This literary leviathan would have 70 per cent of the US literary and general fiction market,” News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said in a statement.
But Penguin Random House has countered that the new company would enhance competition because the combined company could turn out books more efficiently.
How is Stephen King involved?
Now, the weeks-long trial in US District Court in Washington has kicked off, with critically acclaimed author Stephen King going in to bat for the government.
“I came because I think that consolidation is bad for competition,” Mr King said during his testimony earlier this week.
The way the industry has evolved, he said, “it becomes tougher and tougher for writers to find money to live on.”
Stephen King signed books as he left federal court in Washington this week.(AP: Manuel Balce Ceneta)
The 74-year-old expressed skepticism toward the two publishers’ commitment to continue to bid for books separately and competitively after a merger.
“You might as well say you’re going to have a husband and wife bidding against each other for the same house. It’s kind of ridiculous,” he said.
“It would be sort of very gentlemanly and sort of, ‘after you’ and ‘after you.”
Mr King’s remarkable career came amid waves of consolidation in the industry.
As he noted in his remarks, there were dozens of publishers in New York when his breakthrough novel, Carrie, came out in 1974, and he has seen many of them either acquired by larger companies or forced out of business.
The publisher of Carrie, Doubleday, is now part of Penguin Random House, as is another former King publisher, Viking Press.
There’s also an elephant in the room: Amazon
During the trial, Penguin Random House chief executive Markus Dohle admitted that while he has promised to allow the two merged companies to continue to bid against each other for deals with authors, the publisher’s German parent firm, Bertelsmann, had no legal obligation to honor that commitment.
The biggest threat to the publishing industry comes not from consolidation but from the explosion in recent years of subscription-based or cheap content, such as e-books, Mr Dohle said, calling it “all-access.”
Penguin Random House has called Amazon the “biggest threat” to the publishing industry.(Unsplash: Maarten van den Heuvel)
He specifically cited Amazon, which has some 50 million book titles available, and Disney.
“I think it’s the biggest threat to the industry, and especially author income,” he said.
“It will have a tectonic influence on the revenue pool of the industry.”
Mr Dohle liked Penguin Random House to Silicon Valley “angel” investors.
“We invest every year in thousands of ideas and dreams, and only a few of them make it to the top… Each book is unique and there’s a lot of risk,” he said.
The trial is expected to continue for two to three weeks, with the next chapter in the publishing industry soon to be written.
