Quem Anna Maria Torv?
In the novel "Family Business," a smart, beautiful heroine inherits a small newspaper and proceeds to build it into a global media empire. Along the way, she must battle for control of her company and for independence from her jealous, ineffectual husband. Eventually, she divorces him to "make her life what she wanted."
If history is any guide, the publicity-shy Murdochs are likely to avoid airing details of the end of their marriage in public. Lawyer Soodik says the couple could hire a private judge, who could settle disputes speedily, behind closed doors. While any settlement material to the health of News Corp. would have to be disclosed, anything short of that could be kept secret by both parties forever.
Anna Torv
The Murdochs' divorce involves wealth far exceeding any of those cases. But a key question remains: Exactly how much is involved? Even though California is a community-property state, in which marital assets are divided 50-50, identifying and arguing over the value of all the Murdochs' joint assets could take years.
That assumes, of course, that the Murdochs' divorce is settled amicably -- an uncertain prospect at best. Anna Murdoch has hired Daniel Jaffe, a Beverly Hills divorce lawyer with a reputation for settling his cases out of the public eye. "This is a very bright, very professional guy," said lawyer Lynn Soodik, chairwoman of the Los Angeles Bar Association's family law section. "She has not hired gung-ho litigators."
As a business matter, the possibility that a divorce settlement could affect control of the company briefly rippled through trading in News Corp.'s shares, sending them down about 2 percent the day after the July 21 filing. The stock has continued to edge downward, though mainly because of other concerns about the company, said analyst Richard MacDonald of TD Securities Inc.
Jerry Hall
Indeed, the couple's current unpleasantness triggers another issue: succession. Anna Murdoch, who has been a director of News Corp. since 1990, was once viewed as a successor to her 67-year-old husband, at least until one of the couple's children was ready for the job. While eldest son Lachlan, who heads News Corp.'s Australian publishing operations, is considered the front-runner, the issue now seems in doubt. Nightmare Scenario'
Their love affair started as Murdoch's first marriage crumbled. He eventually divorced his first wife, Pat, and married Anna when she turned 22. The couple won custody of Murdoch's daughter Prudence, now 40, and moved to England, where Murdoch had expanded into the tabloid newspaper market (Anna Murdoch once played down suggestions about her influence over her husband by noting that Murdoch's racy Sun would never have photos of bare-breasted models on Page 3 if she were in charge).
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The years in England were often unpleasant ones for Anna, who felt the couple were snubbed by the upper classes that Murdoch's scrappy tabloids tweaked. There were two unfortunate and traumatic incidents as well. Driving her car one day, Anna knocked down an elderly woman, who later died; a coroner ruled it an accident. In the early 1970s, she was also the alleged target of a kidnap plot that ended tragically; the kidnappers killed the wife of another News Corp. executive, mistakenly believing their victim was Anna, according to an account in Britain's Guardian newspaper.
"This one is sui generis, a unique situation," said Raoul Felder, the prominent New York divorce lawyer. "The valuation questions could go on for years, I suspect. {The Murdochs} will be like two rulers who send their armies of lawyers and accountants into battle a thousand miles away."
Born Anna Maria Torv, she was the first child of an Estonian father and a Scottish mother who emigrated to Australia from Scotland in the early 1950s. The Torvs arrived in Australia at about the same time Rupert Murdoch was inheriting the Adelaide News, his first paper, from his late father, Sir Keith Murdoch. The Early Days
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Beautiful and ambitious, Anna was a 17-year-old apprentice journalist at the Mirror when she contrived to interview the boss for an in-house newspaper. "I thought she was a very pretty girl," Murdoch told an interviewer years later. "Her writing skills were not going through my mind."
That boilerplate legalism could set the stage for one of the messiest and costliest divorces in history. Like the fictional husband in Anna Murdoch's book, Rupert Murdoch runs a global media empire, an empire he built methodically over 46 years, starting with a single newspaper he inherited in the couple's native Australia. Collectively, the Murdoch family controls almost 31 percent of the stock in News Corp., the behemoth (annual revenue: $11.2 billion) that operates the 20th Century Fox film studio, the Fox TV network, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and other TV and publishing holdings around the world.
The bulk of the family's wealth is tied up in trusts that hold shares in News Corp. Based on News Corp.'s total market capitalization of just over $35 billion, the trusts' nearly 31 percent stake in the company is worth roughly $10.8 billion. A Matter of Trusts
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Nevertheless, the market's uncertainty led News Corp. to break its silence on the matter and issue a statement last week. "The personal matters between Mr. and Mrs. Murdoch," it read, "will not affect the ownership, control or management of News Corp. Any statement to the contrary is completely inaccurate speculation."
The Murdochs own the usual trappings of the super-wealthy. There is a yacht, plus a $15 million Spanish-style villa in Beverly Hills, Calif., a home on the Upper East Side of New York, a penthouse in London and a sprawling mansion in Aspen, Colo., that features a living room with a trout stream running through it.
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In contrast to the well-born Murdoch, Anna grew up poor. Raised in a dreary high-rise in Blacktown, a far suburb of Sydney, she acted as surrogate mother to her two brothers and sister while her parents struggled to run a series of small businesses. "That's why I'm so bossy," she once told Murdoch's biographer, William Shawcross, "because I had to do it from an early age."
Anna's filing surprised family acquaintances and company observers, who have generally been at a loss to explain the causes of the breakup. A devout Catholic, she was said to be opposed to divorce (neither she nor her husband or their attorneys have commented publicly). The most common explanation -- that she grew tired of Rupert's constant globe-trotting -- rings hollow given that the marriage endured through 31 years of it. Rupert Murdoch is such a dedicated workaholic that he arranged his honeymoon in New York so he could attend business meetings. A Stock Shock
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Pausing to consider her words for a moment, Oldham added an important caveat to that statement: "Of course, with the Murdochs, the scope and scale goes way beyond typical.' " Family Misfortunes Some high-profile divorces: Anna and Rupert Murdoch Key question is how much wealth is involved. Lorna and Gary Wendt of GE Capital Services She won $20 million in December after a widely publicized trial. Craig McCaw His ex-wife, Wendy, won stock in Nextel Communications and NextLink, now worth more than $650 million. Tom Clancy Divorce (from Wanda, wife of 28 years) in court; her side values assets at $191 million. Gloria and Herbert Haft of the former Dart Group She got $55 million in their divorce settlement. CAPTION: The former Anna Maria Torv has filed for divorce from media magnate Rupert Murdoch, 11 years after writing a novel about a divorce-torn empire.
"My prediction is they will settle," said Sarah Oldman, the lawyer who represented Lorna Wendt in her trial against her husband. In such cases, "people typically understand the value of getting this behind them."
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But if Anna Murdoch presses the issue, Wall Street analysts and longtime Murdoch observers agree, the case could set off some spectacular fireworks, outranking all of the recent spate of high-profile divorces among the corporate elite. The list includes cell-phone king Craig McCaw and his wife, Wendy (she won stock in two McCaw-controlled companies last year that is now worth more than $650 million); former retail and real estate tycoon Herbert Haft, who settled his divorce with wife Gloria for $55 million last year; GE Capital Services Corp. chief executive Gary Wendt and his wife, Lorna Wendt (she won $20 million in December after a widely publicized trial); and Robert I. Goldman of Congress Financial Corp., who in April was ordered by a New York court to share half of his $90 million fortune with his former wife, Vira. Soon to get underway: the divorce of author Tom Clancy and his wife of 28 years, Wanda, whose attorneys have valued the couple's holdings at $191 million.
One Wall Street source, who asked not to be named, said the divorce raises a "nightmare scenario": a legal battle among family members over the future leadership of the company. A donnybrook of this kind eventually forced the Haft family to give up control over their company, Dart Group Corp., and left it financially wounded. "What if Mrs. Murdoch wants one kid and he wants another?" asked this source. "What if Elisabeth gets passed over and sides with her mother against {Rupert}?"