Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp said a proposal to eliminate the dual-class share structure that allows his family to effectively control the media group was “convincingly” defeated at its annual general meeting on Thursday morning.
The company, chaired by Lachlan Murdoch after Rupert stepped down last year, confirmed the defeat of the proposal in a statement to Bloomberg.
The Murdoch family has 41 per cent of News Corp voting shares, which cement its control over the media empire.Credit: AP
The company has yet to release the final vote on the AGM resolutions from the webcast meeting.
In September, US hedge fund Starboard Value filed a shareholder resolution to eliminate the dual-class share structure that allows Murdoch to control the company by owning about 41 per cent of the voting shares, despite financially owning just 14 per cent of the group.
“While we can understand how some could see a benefit to a visionary founder retaining outsized control for a limited duration of time, that potential understanding vanishes as super-voting power and the associated protections transition to others,” Starboard cofounder Jeffrey Smith said in a letter to News Corp shareholders in October.
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“This transition of power from Rupert Murdoch to his children has allowed for complicated family dynamics to potentially impact the stability and strategic direction of News Corp,” he wrote.
The resolution was backed by US proxy advisory firms Egan-Jones, Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services, which all argued that no investor should have voting rights that are different from others.
A strong vote for the non-binding shareholder proposal would put pressure on the Murdochs to end their control of the media empire, which includes its Australian newspapers, the valuable majority stake in real estate portal REA and the Foxtel stake, as well as the Wall Street Journal and UK newspapers like The Sun.
