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Rupert & Wendi Murdoch

Wendi Deng was a former Vice President of Business Affairs at News Corporation’s Asian satellite television operation and married to its chief executive Rupert Murdoch, one of the most powerful media owners in the world.

They were married on June 25, 1999 aboard the yacht Morning Glory on the Hudson river. Deng and Murdoch have two children: Grace Helen Murdoch (born November 19, 2001) and Chloe Murdoch (born July 17, 2003).

Taken from a newspaper documenting Rupert Murdoch's and Wendi Deng's wedding, the drawing did not illustrate a story about the marriage itself, but rather about the effect of the wedding upon Murdoch's business empire. A native of China, Deng has become a central player in helping Murdoch's News Corp. expand into the Chinese market. The double portrait illustrates a relationship that has important ramifications for the News Corp., and thus for the international business community.

There is reported to be tension between Murdoch and the children of his marriages to Anna over the terms of a trust holding the family's 28.5 percent stake in News Corporation, estimated in 2005 to be worth about $6.1 billion. Under the trust his children by Wendi Deng share in the proceeds of the stock but have no voting privileges or control of the stock. Voting rights in the stock are divided 50/50 between Murdoch on the one side and his children by two prior marriages.

It is Murdoch's stated desire to have his children by Wendi Deng given a measure of control over the stock proportional to their financial interest in it. However it does not appear that he has any strong legal grounds to contest the present arrangement and his three children by Anna are said to be unwilling to make any such change.

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