That’s Lachlan Murdoch, eldest son of News Corporation mogul Rupert Murdoch, who just last week made his first investment in Australian radio. Now the Financial Times reports that Lachlan is part of the group poised to buy a group of trade magazines from The Nielsen Company.
The FT report which came out Sunday on its website drew lots of attention, but it turns out that Lachlan Murdoch’s involvement was first reported last week by PaidContent.org. Click here for the story.
Apparently unknown to the FT and others who have reported on the sale rumors is that Rupert Murdoch was one of the private equity investors in BPI (Billboard Publications Inc.), which assembled most of the trade magazine group and sold it to VNU (now The Nielsen Company) in 1994. That was strictly a personal investment and quite apart from the News Corporation business. As far as we know, Murdoch never had any personal involvement in managing BPI.
Since The Wrap first reported that a sale was near for Nielsen’s US magazine group, including The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek, other publications have added details about the partners involved in the bid. In addition to James Finkelstein, whose News Communications Inc. publishes The Hill and Who’s Who, the group is said to include Lachlan Murdoch, via his Illyria investment company; Matthew Doull, a nephew of incarcerated ex-media mogul Conrad Black; and George Green, retired President and CEO of Hearst Magazines International.
