Lachlan Murdoch (born September 8, 1971,London, England) is a British-American media executive who took control of the global media empire built by his father, the Australian-American media tycoonRupert Murdoch, after the latter retired in 2023. At the time of his father’s announcement, Lachlan Murdoch was already executive chair and CEO (chief executive officer) of the Fox Corporation, whoseassets include broadcast networks and television stations, and cochair ofNews Corporation (usually called News Corp.), which owns the publishers of British and American newspapers includingThe Times andThe Wall Street Journal and popular tabloids such asThe Sun and theNew York Post.

Early life

Lachlan Murdoch is the third child and eldest son of Rupert Murdoch; his mother is Rupert’s second wife, the Scottish journalist Anna Maria Murdoch (née Torv). Lachlan spent most of his childhood inNew York City, where he attended the elite private schools the Dalton School and Trinity School. In 1994 he graduated fromPrinceton University with abachelor’s degree inphilosophy.

Career

After graduating from Princeton, Lachlan Murdoch went to work in the family business, starting out in newspaper companies in Australia and eventuallyascending to the chair of News Limited, theholding company for all of the Australian properties of News Corp., the multinational conglomerate founded by his father in 1980. Murdoch later became a deputy chief operating officer of News Corp., in charge of television stations and print publishing operations. Notably, however, he was responsible for a significant business failure resulting from his decision to invest in the telecommunications venture One.Tel, which collapsed in 2001.

Murdoch resigned from News Corp. in 2005 amid disputes with the then head of theFox News Channel,Roger Ailes. According to the Australian journalist Paddy Manning, the author ofThe Successor: The High Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch (2022), Murdoch left the company because he felt that his father had sided with Ailes against him. He returned to Australia and started an investment firm that put money into different businesses, including media companies and anIndian Premier Leaguecricket team.

Murdoch returned to the family fold in the mid-2010s after a phone-hacking scandal in Great Britain involving News Corp.’sNews of the World, which led to theshutdown of that tabloid. “He was watching the family tear itself apart over the phone-hacking scandal,” Manning told theAssociated Press in 2023, adding that he was “instrumental in trying to circle the wagons and turn the guns outwards.”

Upon Murdoch’s return, he and his brother,James Murdoch, became cochairs of News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, the latter created in 2013 to take over News Corp.’s television and media holdings. But the two brothers had different visions for their companies’ future as well as different worldviews. James wished to create an international brand that would seem sensible to political centrists and those with a globalist perspective, while Lachlan favored a brand that would promote far-right politics andnationalism.

In 2019 Rupert Murdoch finalized the sale of most of the holdings of 21st Century Fox, including the movie studio20th Century Fox, to theDisney Company for some $71 billion. He made Lachlan Murdoch chief executive of the new Fox Corporation, the parent company of the Fox News Channel, a move that appeared to put his son in line to succeed him. James Murdoch, who had been donating to liberal causes, resigned from News Corp. after the sale, saying in a letter that he had “disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.”

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As head of Fox Corporation, Lachlan Murdoch oversaw the Fox News Channel’s agreement in 2023 to pay $787.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed byDominion Voting Systems over the network’s continual airing of false claims that the company had rigged voting machines to help defeat then U.S. Pres.Donald Trump in thepresidential election of 2020. After the settlement, Murdoch claimed that Fox News had merely been acting as a news organization by reporting on newsworthy events.

In September 2023 Rupert Murdoch, who was then 92 years old, announced that he would soon retire from the boards of directors of both Fox Corporation and News Corp., which would leave the then 52-year-old Lachlan Murdoch in charge of both companies. Although the younger Murdoch was less outwardly political, his father said in a note to employees that he expected his son to maintain the Fox News Channel’sconservative bent: “My father firmly believed in freedom, and Lachlan is absolutely committed to the cause.”

In September 2025, the Murdoch family reached an agreement after a bittersuccession battle that ensured Lachlan would have control of the family’s key media outlets after Rupert Murdoch’s death. The $3.3 billion deal – reached months after a bid to essentially disinherit three of Rupert Murdoch’s children – Prue, Liz, and James was blocked by a court – insures Lachlan Murdoch’s control of the media empire until at least 2050. It also insures that Rupert Murdoch’s goal of insuring the continuation of what he has built and called the “protector of theconservative voice in the English-language world.”

Although Lachlan Murdoch speaks with an American accent, he uses Australian expressions such as “G’day, mate.” He has reportedly confided to a friend that he feels most like himself when he is in Australia. Murdoch married an Australian model, Sarah O’Hare, in 1999.