Last month, Rupert Murdoch told the New York Post (which he owns) that he was “looking forward to spending the second half” of his life with Ann Lesley Smith, a former model and police chaplain. However, Vanity Fair reported that the engagement has now been called off.
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The 92-year-old who has three children from his marriage to Anna Murdoch — James, Elisabeth and Lachlan — has a fortune worth $8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on April 8.
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The media mogul is the chair of News Corp. and Fox Corp., which are both listed in New York. The former has newspaper subsidiaries including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times of London, and The Sun, as well as titles in Australia.
Fox Corp. includes Fox News, America’s most popular cable-news network, and the Fox TV stations.
Murdoch then set his sights on the US. He purchased the San Antonio Express-News in 1973 and the New York Post three years later.
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The mogul’s biggest outlays, though, might have come from divorce settlements. The end of his 32-year second marriage to Anna Torv, with whom he had three children, is reported to have set him back $1.7 billion, making it one of the most expensive divorces on record.
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Source: The New York Times
Two biographers, Neil Chenoweth and Michael Wolff, said the amount Torv received was likely lower because some of the stock she received in the settlement went to their three children.
Murdoch had two more children, Grace and Chloe, with his third wife, Wendi Deng.
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Murdoch married Deng 17 days after his divorce from Anna was finalized in 1999, and they divorced in 2013. The dissolution was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum thanks to one prenuptial and two postnuptial agreements.
He also has another daughter, Prudence, who was born in 1958 from his first marriage.