- Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch – Rupert Murdoch’s billionaire heir – is still being paid the same $20 million he was to lead the much larger 21st Century Fox before the sale to Disney, a review of regulatory filings by Bloomberg found.
- Even Rupert Murdoch – the architect of the Fox empire – took a pay cut after the deal closed. His target compensation was cut in half to $18 million, Bloomberg’s Anders Melin reported.
- The compensation of Disney CEO Bob Iger has also been publically criticized.
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By almost any measure, Fox Corp. is a significantly smaller company than it was a year ago.
Despite this, CEO Lachlan Murdoch is still being paid the same $20 million he was to do what was undoubtedly a much bigger job, a review of regulatory filling by Bloomberg’s Anders Melin found. It’s not like Murdoch needs the money – he’s also the billionaire heir to former 21st Century Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch.
After Disney’s $71 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s assets closed in March, the company went from employing 22,400 people and $30.4 billion in revenue before the deal to having 7,700 employees and revenues of $11.4 billion after the deal, according to Bloomberg. Fox’s market cap is also 75% smaller than it once was.
Even media tycoon Rupert Murdoch – the architect of the Fox empire and Lachlan’s father – took a pay cut after the deal closed. His target compensation fell to $18 million, Bloomberg reported.
Lachlan Murdoch's compensation package is composed of a $3 million salary and bonuses to be paid in both cash and stock that together are forecasted to total $20 billion, Bloomberg reported. The package's value put his compensation in the 98th percentile of all S&P 500 CEOs, according to Bloomberg.
Rupert Murdoch tapped Lachlan to lead Fox Corp. after the Disney sale was finalized. Murdoch's brother James was the CEO of 21st Century Fox before the sale, and Murdoch served as executive chairman. Lachlan Murdoch is already a billionaire and personally received $2 billion from the sale to Disney, Business Insider previously reported.
Murdoch isn't the only person connected to Fox that has taken heat for their hefty compensation, however. Disney CEO Bob Iger has been repeatedly criticized by Disney heiress Abigail Disney for the disparity between his pay and that of those who work in the company's theme parks.
"Bob needs to understand he's an employee, just the same as the people scrubbing gum off the sidewalk are employees," Disney told Yahoo News host Zainab Salbi in July 2019, "and they're entitled to all the same dignity and human rights that he is."