After six years of marriage, Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall are divorcing, according to news reports yesterday night.
The New York Times said that the quick breakup “surprised” the 91-year-old media tycoon and 65-year-old model’s friends.
For Mr. Murdoch, whose estimated net worth is £14 billion, this marriage marked his fourth union. After a 22-year relationship with Mick Jagger that produced four children, it was Miss Hall’s legally first marriage.
On a Bali beach in 1990, she married the Rolling Stones singer; however, their 1999 divorce resulted in the annulment of their marriage.
The existence of a pre-nuptial agreement between Mr. Murdoch and Miss Hall is unknown. But Mr. Murdoch did have one with Wendi Deng, his third wife.
Miss Hall’s absence was noticed by revelers at Mr. Murdoch’s summer party earlier this week. I did think it was strange that she wasn’t there, one of the people in attendance on Monday night at the Serpentine Gallery in London said.
She frequently attends events of this nature because she is a social butterfly.
I also observed that neither her friends nor members of her family were present.
In August 2021, when they were photographed coming separately for a dinner, Mr. Murdoch and Miss Hall were last spotted together in public in London. It is believed that they drove off in the same automobile.
For its account of the split, the New York Times referenced two sources. They both spoke under the guise of anonymity.
Friends told the newspaper that in the early years of his marriage to Miss Hall, Mr. Murdoch was “happily devoting more time to his new wife,” leaving his other children to “assert themselves at the top of the corporate hierarchy” and son Lachlan, who was to take over as the head of his media empire.
The Sun and Times newspapers, as well as Sky TV, are among Mr. Murdoch’s enterprises.
Along with various businesses in his native Australia, he also owns the Wall Street Journal and the US television network Fox News.
After divorcing Miss Deng, 53, with whom he had been married for 14 years, Mr. Murdoch met Miss Hall. Entrepreneur and investor Miss Deng made headlines in 2011 when, during the phone-hacking incident, she smacked a man who had thrown a custard pie at her husband in front of a parliamentary committee.
When the couple separated, there were rumors that Miss Deng had become close to Tony Blair, the godfather of her and Mr. Murdoch’s daughter Grace, which Miss Deng denied.
In 2015, Mr. Murdoch and Miss Hall were in Australia. The couple finally made their relationship public at the rugby world cup final at Twickenham in London that October after weeks of rumors. Miss Hall was seen grinning widely when Mr. Murdoch kissed her on the cheek.
At the 2016 Golden Globes, they shared their first red carpet appearance. Rupert couldn’t be happier, according to friends at the time. He doesn’t appear to be a snobby old man in love with a teen. Simply put, he exudes extreme happiness. It’s a fantastic thing.
After learning that Sir Mick had fathered a child with Brazilian model Luciana Gimenez, Miss Hall left the $13 million property in Richmond, south-west London, where she had lived since their divorce. Mr. Murdoch referred to himself as “the luckiest and happiest guy in the world” when he announced his engagement on Twitter. He gave Miss Hall a 20-carat ring that is estimated to be worth more than £2.4 million.
A week before Mr. Murdoch turned 85, their official wedding was a tiny gathering with only a select group of close friends. A few days later, they had a big wedding at St. Bride’s Church in Fleet Street, London, attended by celebrities such Michael Caine, Bob Geldof, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tom Stoppard, and Tracey Emin. A silk ice-blue Vivienne Westwood gown worn by Miss Hall is said to have cost around £8,000.
Friends claimed that after spending decades concentrating on his enterprises, Miss Hall brought more “balance” into her husband’s life. When Miss Hall cancelled a West End revival of The Graduate, it was one of the few instances of tension.
According to rumors, Mr. Murdoch forbade her from playing the nude role of Mrs. Robinson, which she had previously performed in London.
Miss Hall went to Mr. Murdoch’s 90th birthday celebration at the upscale New York restaurant Tavern on the Green the previous year. During the celebrations, which were attended by notable figures from business, sports, and politics, she allegedly “doted” on him, a source claimed.
Australian model Patricia Booker was Mr. Murdoch’s first spouse. In 1965, they got divorced.
He spent more than three decades with his second wife, Anna, a former newspaper reporter, before their divorce in 1999. With a purported cost to Mr. Murdoch of £1.5 billion, their divorce is still the second-most costly in history.
Miss Hall was the face of singer Bryan Ferry’s 1975 album Siren and was in a relationship with him before to dating Sir Mick.
Ten kids total between Mr. Murdoch and Miss Hall. Prudence, age 63, is Mr. Murdoch’s first-born child; Elisabeth, age 53; Lachlan, age 50; James, age 49; Grace, age 21; and Chloe, age 19; are his children from his second marriage.
Elizabeth, 38, James, 36, Georgia May, 30, and Gabriel, 24, are Miss Hall’s four children, all of whom she has with Sir Mick.
The media mogul spoke with Boris Johnson for fifteen minutes on Monday night at Mr. Murdoch’s summer party. Priti Patel, Liz Truss, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid, and local government minister Kemi Badenoch were also in attendance.
Lachlan, Grace, and Chloe Murdoch were all present, according to a source. Miss Hall’s spokesperson was unavailable for comment last night.
Last night, there was much speculation over how a divorce would impact Rupert Murdoch’s enormous wealth.
How much of the media mogul’s $14 billion wealth might go to Jerry Hall is unknown. Mr. Murdoch may have signed a “quite generous” pre-nuptial agreement, according to attorney Mark Stephens of the Howard Kennedy firm.
For the tycoon’s commercial empire, this would have been written “anticipating not interfering with the line of succession.”
However, assets the couple has accumulated since getting hitched could be in jeopardy.
They acquired a £11.25 million Georgian home in Oxfordshire, close to Henley-on-Thames, in 2019.
A year later, it was revealed that they had purchased Great Tew Manor, a Cotswolds “fixer-upper” that was slated for a £30 million restoration effort.
The pair invested £228 million in a 340,000-acre cattle ranch close to Yellowstone Park in the US last December.
A ranch in California, a winery in Los Angeles, and a sheep and cattle farm in Mr. Murdoch’s native Australia are among the family’s other properties.
As the face of companies like Revlon cosmetics, Miss Hall amassed wealth from her profession as a model.
She also played supporting roles in movies like Batman. She received an estimated settlement of up to £18 million after her breakup from Mick Jagger.
Rupert Murdoch had already experienced three divorces before to his marriage to Jerry Hall, the first of which was from the late Patricia Booker.
The rumored divorce would mark a first for Miss Hall because, despite having dated Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones for decades, they were never wed.
In 1956, Mr. Murdoch wed Miss Booker; they were divorced in 1967. Prudence, their daughter, works for her father’s tabloid publication, News of the World.
Mr. Murdoch wed Scottish journalist Anna Torv later that year. Elisabeth, Lachlan, his designated heir, and James were born during this, his longest marriage.
In 1999, the couple got divorced.
17 days after the finalization of his billion-dollar divorce from Anna, Mr. Murdoch wed Wendi Deng, a woman who was 38 years his junior. One of Mr. Murdoch’s businesses at the time was Star TV, where Miss Deng worked.
They had two kids together and were married for 14 years.
They split up after Miss Deng’s email account was audited and it revealed notes she had sent to herself about Tony Blair’s “excellent body” and “very, really good legs butt [sic]”. Accusations that she had grown close to the former prime minister were refuted by her.
Miss Hall had four kids with Sir Mick before she wed Mr. Murdoch. After 22 years of marriage, the couple settled their debts in 1999.
Sir Mick and Luciana Gimenez, a Brazilian model, reportedly had a kid after Miss Hall and Sir Mick split up, but the former couple are still close friends.
Bryan Ferry, the lead singer for Roxy Music, was one of Miss Hall’s companions prior to Sir Mick.