WILL RUPERT GO DOWN?

A powerful group of News Corp's shareholders have accused Rupert Murdoch of "egregious" behaviour and treating his media empire like a "family candy jar".

The shareholder group, which includes banks and pension funds, accused Murdoch of "rampant nepotism" and using News Corp resources for "his own personal and political objectives".

The institutional shareholders, led by the Amalgamated Bank, said it was "inconceivable" that Murdoch would not have been aware of rampant phone hacking at the News of the World.

"It is inconceivable that [James] Murdoch and his fellow board members would not have been aware of the illicit news gathering practices. And yet, the board took no real action to investigate the allegations until 7 July 2011, when Murdoch selected two of his co-directors to deal with the imbroglio," the shareholders said in a legal filing in Delaware, where News Corp is registered.

"These revelations should not have taken years to uncover and stop," the filing adds. "[They] show a culture run amuck within News Corp and a board that provides no effective review or oversight."


The shareholders noted that Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International and editor of the News of the World at the time of the hacking, was "consistently promoted even while the scandal was unfolding".
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Rupert Murdoch, March 1931) is an Australian American media mogul and the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation.
Beginning with one newspaper in Adelaide, Murdoch acquired and started other publications in his native Australia before expanding News Corp into the United Kingdom, United States and Asian media markets.


Murdoch's first permanent foray into TV was in the USA, where he created Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986.
In the 2000s, he became a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry and the Internet, and purchased a respected business newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.
Murdoch has also owned, sold, bought, been a part of, or still owns-

Sunday Times in Perth, Australia
The Daily Mirror, sydney, australia
New Zealand daily
The Australian
The Daily Telegraph, sydney
The Sun, UK
The Times, UK
The Sunday, UK
Sky Television, UK
News of the World, UK
San Antonio Express-News, US
Star, US
New York Post, US
20th Century Fox, US
Metromedia, US
Fox Broadcasting Company, US
The Weekly Standard, US
Hughes Electronics, US
DirecTV, US
General Motors, US
MySpace, US
IGN Entertainment
Dow Jones & Company, US
*currently he is attempting to buy- BSkyB, UK. this is now in jepordy.



On October 2008 Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff wrote a Vanity Fair story recounting a meeting between Barack Obama, Murdoch, and Ailes at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York early that summer. Obama had initially resisted Murdoch's proposals for a meeting, despite senior News Corp. executives having recruited the Kennedys to act as go-betweens. According to Wolff, at the meeting Obama raised the issue of Fox News's portrayal of him "as suspicious, foreign, fearsome – just short of a terrorist", while Ailes said it might not have been this way if Obama had "more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand." A "tentative truce" was nonetheless agreed upon.
Wolff also noted that Murdoch has met every US President since, and including, Harry Truman.

In 1999, The Economist reported that Newscorp Investments had made £11.4 billion ($20.1 billion) in profits over the previous 11 years but had not paid net corporation tax. It also reported that after an examination of the available accounts, Newscorp could normally have been expected to pay corporate tax of approximately $350 million. The article explained that in practice the corporation's complex structure, international scope and use of offshore tax havens allowed News Corporation to pay minimal taxes.

According to the 2010 list of Forbes richest Americans, Murdoch is the 38th richest person in the US and the 117th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $6.2 billion.