According to foreign media, 91-year-old media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is about to divorce again. Murdoch ranks 71st on the 2021 Forbes List of the Richest People of the World, meaning Murdoch will split a huge $17.6 billion fortune with his fourth wife, Jerry Hall.
Murdoch's wife, Patricia, was a flight attendant from Melbourne at the time, and the two were married for nine years and had a daughter.
Murdoch married and had three children with former Newspaper Estonian journalist Anna Toff in the same year, a 31-year marriage that ended in 1999 and divided Anna's property worth $1.7 billion, making it one of the most expensive divorces in history.
Just 17 days after his divorce from Anna, Murdoch married Wendi Deng, 38 years younger than himself, on a private yacht in New York Harbor. The well-known "legendary Chinese woman" Deng Wendi had just graduated from Yale University at the time, and was looked for by Murdoch to work at the headquarters of its satellite TV company, and finally Deng Wendi successfully promoted to become the boss's wife. As a result of the prenuptial agreement, the 14-year marriage did not set a new record for a $1.7 billion "breakup fee." After the divorce, Wendi Deng only kept two properties that the two bought when they were married, which were worth more than $110 million at the time.
Then there's the incumbent, Jerry Hall, who married in 2016.
Hall, 65, a former top model and actor, married in London in 2016. It is reported that as Murdoch's fourth wife, this is actually Hall's first marriage. In 1990, Hall married Mick Jagger, lead singer of the British rock band Rolling Stones, in Bali. Later, the nine-year "marriage" was declared null and void by the British court, and the two reached an economic settlement plan and raised four children together.
For this divorce, there is speculation that Murdoch may have signed a "fairly generous" prenuptial agreement with Hall, with the intention of "not interfering with the order of succession of The Murdoch business empire". Although the authenticity of this prenuptial agreement is unclear, the Murdochs may still face high property division issues in the event of a divorce.
The two have collectively purchased more than $300 million worth of assets such as homes and ranches, including a property and a manor in England, as well as multiple ranches in the United States and Australia.
