Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch turns 80 today, but is showing no signs of slowing down as he embarks on what could be the biggest deal in a life spent building a global empire.
With Murdoch’s News Corp. poised to win control of British broadcaster BSkyB with a £7.5 billion (€8.8 billion) bid for the shares it does not already own, the tycoon is set to further entrench his global power and influence.
“I think anyone who is looking forward to Rupert’s retirement will be very disappointed. Rupert, far from winding down... he’s winding up,” Australian journalist and author Hugh Lunn said this week.
“He is getting bigger – it shows you what you can still do even when you’re in your eighties,” said Mr Lunn, who worked for Melbourne-born Mr Murdoch for 17 years.
Speculation about Mr Murdoch’s retirement and succession planning has been rife for years, but indications are that the billionaire father-of-six intends to keep working at the empire he built from a single Adelaide afternoon paper.
“I had lunch with him recently,” Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of Murdoch’s British tabloid The Sun, told The Guardian newspaper. “He was going on about iPad this and internet that. I think he’s 80 going on 18.”
Comments on his age are reportedly unwelcome, but Mr Murdoch has crammed much into his seven decades – creating a business with interests stretching from Australia to Europe, the US,Asia and Latin America.
Born into a patrician family headed by his newspaper proprietor father Sir Keith Murdoch, he is frequently reviled by critics who slam his politically-conservative dominance of the global news market and blame him for the excesses of tabloid media.
But he is revered in equal measure by his staff and respected by opponents.
Acquisition and expansion, and a formidable capacity to manage debt, have characterised his career.
Out of his Australian newspaper assets, including his launching of the national broadsheet The Australian in 1964, grew a global media empire.
In the late 1960s, he moved to London where he acquired more mastheads, including News of the World and The Sun and later The Times, changing the face and landscape of the British media and outraging traditional proprietors.
In the 1980s, he fought a bitter industrial dispute over his decision to move his papers from their traditional home in Fleet Street to new headquarters in Wapping where electronic production allowed him to slash staff.
Mr Murdoch has always moved around the world to be near his business interests. From Britain, he relocated to the United States where more bold acquisitions followed and where he became a naturalised US citizen in 1985.
By 2010, his News Corp. boasted assets of €41 billion and annual revenues of about €24 billion across its television, book publishing, internet and newspaper businesses, including conservative US media outlets such as Fox television and the Wall Street Journal.
Twice-married, Mr Murdoch, known for his flawless manners, has never diversified out of the media businesses – often taking considerable risks with his buys – and is often portrayed as a newsman at heart.
The media proprietor has always surprised, and his bold BSkyB bid is the latest in a long string of unexpected gambles that include his tendency to turn up unannounced in his offices around the world, Mr Lunn said.
“He turns up unexpectedly at your desk,” Mr Lunn said. “And Rupert asks you questions... or else he says, ‘What’s the circulation of your opposition paper?’”