Deals
Murdoch Caps Long Career by Laughing All the Way to Bank
- Disney’s winning bid for Fox assets will net him billions
- Cements the 87-year-old’s legacy as a great media dealmaker
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Rupert Murdoch had one more blockbuster deal in him. And it might be the grizzled veteran’s sweetest yet.
The 87-year-old mogul is poised to complete a $71 billion sale of selected 21st Century Fox Inc. assets to Walt Disney Co. While Murdoch’s track record is mixed -- the 2005 investment in MySpace was a half-billion dollars he never saw again -- this transaction will cement his legacy as one of the media world’s top wheeler-dealers. After competition from Comcast Corp. pushed Disney to boost its winning bid, Murdoch stands to add about $3 billion of Disney stock to what Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates is already a $18.1 billion fortune.