This Mouse Swallows Part Of A Fox: Disney Buys Much of Murdoch Empire
Ultimately, it was the Mouse that roared — and Fox that beat a retreat from the global stage.
The Walt Disney Co. has struck a deal valued at $52 billion to acquire much of the Hollywood holdings of 21st Century Fox, the global television and entertainment conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his family. The deal occurs against a backdrop of swift changes to the industry's finances and uncertainty about succession plans at both companies.
The sale represents a stunning turn of events for Murdoch, a reversal of decades of alternately calculated and impulsive expansion of a sprawling media empire that started with a single afternoon paper in a forgotten city on the southern coast of his native Australia.
The most profitable and controversial part of the Fox empire — Fox News --would not be part of the deal. Yet the family is selling off other defining properties, including the movie studio 20th Century Fox.
The following story is based on interviews with outside industry analysts and current and former executives for the Murdochs and for Disney.
From Disney's
