Murdoch makes his sons an offer they won't refuse

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2015/jun/11/murdoch-makes-sons-offer-godfather

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At the end of one of the greatest films ever made about an all-powerful New York-based family, it is the youngest son who takes over from the patriarch. But the fictional tale about the Corleone family in the Godfather is nowhere near as fascinating as the family saga being played out among the Murdochs over who gets to take over from patriarch Rupert.

Not that Rupert Murdoch is behaving like Vito Corleone of course. For a start, not many mafia bosses, fictional or otherwise, would hand power of a global business controlling much of what we watch and read on a daily basis to not one but both of his sons.

Some insiders believe the appointment of James Murdoch as chief executive of 21st Century Fox is a sign that the youngest son is the first among equals, his career entirely remade after the horrors of the phone-hacking scandal which he became mired in as head of the UK newspaper arm of the family firm back in 2011.

But this analysis forgets the corporate governance-busting decision to confirm Rupert’s eldest son Lachlan’s role as executive chairman alongside his father.

Wouldn’t we all love to have been in the room when the 84-year-old uber boss said he had a plan to make one son the ceo and the other an executive chairman, a weird role at the best of times. In most firms the chairman gets to pick the chief executive, so does that make Lachlan more senior? Or will James, running the business and with a good reputation among shareholders for his management so far (with the exception of the abortive bid for Time Warner) tell his elder brother to go and play somewhere else?

And when Rupert isn’t around to mediate, who will?

The two brothers get on brilliantly by all accounts with matching tattoos and perfect looks. But even close family are not immune to quarrels. When the phone-hacking scandal caused a schism in the family with criticism over James’s handling of the fallout, Vanity Fair claimed that the Murdoch siblings had discussed succession with a “family counsellor”.

Related: Rupert Murdoch preparing to step down as 21st Century Fox chief

There are plenty of examples of brothers working successfully together of course but there are other examples from the biblical Cain and Abel to David and Ed Miliband where they do not.

Investors have grown used to the ways of Rupert, a man who, whatever anyone thinks of him, turned an Australian newspaper business into a global media empire, but will they be as quiescent with his sons, especially if the firm continues to be run like a corner shop with a 12% stake rather than a global business?

One thing seems clear though, succession will be handed down the male line. Out of Rupert’s four daughters Elisabeth is a successful entrepreneur with lots of experience running a media company in Shine. Yet she is no longer involved in a major way in the family firm.

At the end of the film that sparked many sequels, Vito Corleone suffers a fatal heart attack leaving the other mafiosi to call his youngest son Michael Don Corleone. As one senior media executive quipped: “This saga will never end as Rupert will never die.”