About half a year ago, the 91-year-old media magnate billionaire Murdoch's fourth divorce shocked everyone, but I didn't expect that this uncle would still be able to toss so much at his age.
At the time, he joked that maybe we could soon witness Murdoch's fifth wedding.
Unexpectedly, this week, a jaw-dropping news came out - 92-year-old Murdoch is in love again!!!
He was photographed by paparazzi vacationing with a female companion on a public beach on a small Caribbean island, dining and sunbathing together. The two are said to have come here at the invitation of another billionaire friend.
Murdoch's female companion wears a yellow backless bikini and a very prominent cross necklace. Both were in a good mood.
The woman was soon identified as 66-year-old Ann Leslie Smith.
Ann is the widow of veteran American country music star Chester Smith, who was 26 years older than Ann and died back in 2008.
Ann was a former police chaplain (a role that provides psychological help to police and their families) and is now a radio host.
Ann's ex-husband founded several successful radio and broadcasting companies, while Ann owned 13 television stations in California and Oregon.
So she and Murdoch, who is engaged in media, are also half peers, probably because of similar circles. Murdoch's previous wives were almost all in the media industry.
Before Murdoch was yet known, he married his first flight attendant wife Patricia in 1956, gave birth to an eldest daughter, and the two divorced in 1967.
In the same year, he married journalist Anna Tove, and the two had three children.
In 1999, Murdoch divorced again and married Wendi Deng, an intern at his TV station.
Murdoch and Wendi Deng's marriage also broke down in 2013, leaving behind two mixed-race daughters. In 2016, Murdoch married for the fourth time, and the bride was supermodel Jerry Hall.
I originally thought that Jerry would accompany Murdoch to spend his old age in peace, but last year, Murdoch filed for divorce.
Murdoch and Jerry's wedding (row; second row, second from right; Three rows, left, two, and right, are Murdoch's children)
So ah, no one can say whether this new girlfriend will become a fifth wife, or even have another child, after all, how ridiculous things can happen to Murdoch. (Wendi Deng and Murdoch's children make use of frozen sperm and test-tube technology)
Murdoch's six children
I believe that at this moment, seeing the news that Murdoch has a new love, the most collapsed is Murdoch's children - they are going to be divided again.
Murdoch's $14 billion inheritance involves the division of equity in top media such as Fox TV, The Times and The Wall Street Journal, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in art collections and real estate.
Due to his many children and ex-wives, their family infighting was ridiculed by the American media as the real "War of Succession".
Murdoch Group insiders say the family war has begun. If there is another dark horse entering at this time, the ones who suffer the most in this war are likely to be Wendi Deng's two children.
The author of Murdoch's biography has said that his family is the greatest threat to the group controlled by Murdoch.
Murdoch's father, Sir Keith Murdoch, owned 4 Australian newspapers when he was alive. Murdoch is the second oldest in the family, with a sister above and a sister below.
After his father's death, the family's shares were divided equally among the children, and Murdoch did not have an absolute advantage in the group.
That is, Murdoch's sisters are not very demon-like, and do not have great ambitions for this industry, and finally let Murdoch buy their shares, completely control the family business, and also control the power to distribute family property.
In order to pass on the property, the Murdoch family established a family trust fund very early.
The family trust fund is very convenient for the rich, the rich only need to determine who is the beneficiary of the estate, how much each person can get, whether there are any conditions for taking the money, and the rest can be handled by the trust company, saving a lot of trouble.
Murdoch and Wendi Deng's two daughters
The "Cruden Financial Services Corporation" of the Murdoch Group manages the succession. Cruden stipulated that key elements of trust fund decisions, changes in trust beneficiaries, and sale of group shares must be decided by voting.
Murdoch should have had an absolute say in the vote, but that changed in 1999.
Second wife Anna (middle) and three children
At that time, Murdoch cheated on Wendi Deng and divorced his second wife, Anna. Anna is a ruthless character who is not inferior to Wendi Deng.
Her divorce settlement did not emphasize the maximization of her own interests (but in fact she received the highest divorce compensation of the year), but more foresight to ask Murdoch to divide the voting rights between her three children and the eldest daughter Prudence left by his first wife.
The eldest daughter born to his first wife, Prudence
Four children each had one vote, while Murdoch had four votes each.
In other words, the four children have a check and balance on Murdoch's decision-making, and if they are not satisfied with the way Murdoch sets out the distribution of the inheritance, then the money cannot be divided.
Anna's move is the "third party" Deng Wendi. Because Anna knew that her children were not willing to shrink their share of the inheritance and give the money to their stepmother's family.
Sure enough, when Wendi Deng's two daughters, Grace and Chloe, were born, Murdoch himself wanted to win them the same trust amount as the first four children, which was strongly opposed by several adult children.
Even thanks to Wendi Deng's efforts, the two daughters received only a limited amount of trust funds and could not have voting rights.
That is to say, when they are adults, they cannot participate in the rule-making of the inheritance division, and can only be at the mercy of their older siblings.
Of course, the four children of the first wife and the second wife, seemingly in the same camp, are actually fighting in secret.
The second wife and Murdoch's three children are daughter Elizabeth, eldest son Lachlan (eldest son of the family), and second son James.
Picture 4 shows the eldest daughter born to his first wife
At present, the real control of the family, it is believed that Murdoch's chosen successor is the eldest son Lackran, who has been appointed executive chairman of Fox.
Although he holds a high position, he is not the largest shareholder in the family shares, and his half-sister Prudence, sister Elizabeth, brother James and his shares are the same.
In other words, Lacklan is nominally the successor, but the right to speak is limited, and Lacklan must at least attract one sibling to his side to ensure that the trust fund rules and the future trend of the group can be carried out according to his ideas.
However, the relationship between the family is not so harmonious, and the relationship between the second son James and Lachlan is particularly bad.
Because James was originally the CEO of Fox and was originally the most promising person to inherit the "throne", as a result, his father let his brother sit in the position of executive chairman and climbed on his head.
Worst of all, James and his brother have completely opposite business philosophies, James wants Fox News to be freer, but Lackland is said to be more conservative than Murdoch.
The two have been very gunpowder in recent years, and they are not willing to be in the same frame, and James is unlikely to stand on his brother's side.
James and Lacklan let their sisters take sides in order to fight for power, and James hopes that it is best to work together to remove Lacklan from the "throne".
Murdoch's eldest daughter, Prudence, born to his late first wife, is completely "pale as a daisy" in this war.
She has long ceased to work in the group, and she has no clear idea of which brother to support, and she has a good relationship with everyone. He was ridiculed by his family as "Swiss" (Switzerland is permanently neutral).
Second daughter and eldest daughter
And the position of the second sister Elizabeth is equally ambiguous. She has been in the family business for many years, and her philosophy is similar to James's, but she is also very loyal to her father. She usually appears wherever her father and Lachlan appear.
For example, at a party hosted by Murdoch News Corp in London last year, Elizabeth stood intimately with Prudence and Lachlan, while James did not attend.
Whether Elizabeth will support her father's approved Luchlan or the like-minded James, no one can say now.
For now, it seems that the biggest beneficiary of the Murdoch family is most likely to be Laclan.
Although there are conflicts between him and his brother, in the distribution of inheritance, they will still huddle to exclude Deng Wendi's two daughters.
But for the two little girls, they may not care about it.
No matter how uncomfortable their four half-brothers and sisters are with them, they must also give them hundreds of millions of dollars in property (rumored to be $2 billion per person) as agreed.
(Chloe and Grace)
Therefore, the big brothers and sisters are not a threat to Wendi Deng and his two daughters, but they should really worry about Murdoch's relationship situation. If Murdoch does marry a fifth wife and does have children again, I am afraid that the distribution of the inheritance will have to be changed again.
If this is the case, the two girls will get less money, and the infighting among the big brothers and sisters will be more chaotic. But even so, Wendi Deng and her daughters' lives will not be bad.
Just a few days before Murdoch's romance was exposed, Wendi Deng was also photographed vacationing on a beach.
54-year-old Wendi Deng maintains a stunning figure, wears a bright blue bikini, and frolics in the waves with her eldest daughter, Grace.
After her divorce, Wendi Deng first dated Charlie Sim, a violinist much younger than herself, and then fell in love with 21-year-old Hungarian model Bertolde Zaholan for two years.
In 2020, he was also witnessed traveling with an unidentified handsome young man. In the past two years, she has returned to her single life, occasionally attending fashion events and celebrity dinners, low-key and leisurely.