Rupert Murdoch prepares to hand over his media empire

BIRTHDAY PARTIES in pandemics are dreary, even for billionaires. But Rupert Murdoch’s 90th, which he celebrated on March 11th, should at least have been less stressful than his 80th. Back then British detectives were burrowing into a subsidiary of his firm, News Corporation, then the world’s fourth-largest media company, for evidence that its journalists had hacked phones and bribed police. Several convictions later, and after the closure of the 168-year-old , Mr Murdoch was hauled before a British parliamentary inquiry on what he called “the most humble day of my life”.A decade on from the near-collapse of his empire, things are going rather better for the Australian-born tycoon. The phone-hacking scandal has receded. The choicest assets in his collection have been sold to Disney at the top of the market. Fox News is America’s most popular (if also its most despised) cable channel. And in a coup last month, Mr Murdoch forced tech giants to pay for linking to his content. “He has the money. He has huge amounts of political power. He has it all,” says Claire Enders, a veteran media-watcher.