tony abbott PM
REUTERS 2023
Sept 22 (Reuters) - Fox Corp's (FOXA.O), opens new tab former chairman Rupert Murdoch's total compensation for 2023 climbed more than 24% to $22.9 million, a regulatory filing showed on Friday.
The media mogul stepped down from his role on Thursday after a career spanning more than seven decades and handed the reins to his son, Lachlan Murdoch, who will become the sole chairman of News Corp and continue as chair and CEO of Fox.
Rupert Murdoch will be chairman emeritus of both companies.
At Fox, his 2023 compensation includes an annual base salary of $5 million and about $7.6 million in stock awards and options. It also includes $4.4 million in incentive pay, the filing showed.
Lachlan's compensation at Fox stands at $21.8 million for 2023, little changed from last year's $21.7 million.
He is set to take over the Murdoch media empire at a time when the industry faces challenges ranging from dwindling traditional television viewership to copyright theft allegations.
Separately on Friday, Fox nominated former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott AC and Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson to the company's board.
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...om fossil fuels to their supporters. Following DeSmog’s story earlier this week about former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott joining the Global Warming Policy Foundation, The Guardian reports that Greenpeace and others are now urging the government to sack Abbott as an advisor on its board of trade.
Ex Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has joined the UK’s main climate denial group saying: “we need more science”.
Abbott announced he was “pleased” to join the board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which had “consistently injected a note of realism into the climate debate”.
“All of us want to save the only planet we have but this should not be by means which impoverish poorer people in richer countries and hold poorer countries back,” he said in a GWPF press release today.
“We need more genuine science and less groupthink in this debate – that’s where the GWPF has been a commendably consistent if lonely voice.”
The GWPF, which was founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, is known for consistently spreading climate disinformation and undermining net zero policies designed to tackle carbon emissions. The organisation is currently facing down a complaint to the UK Charity Commission, made by a cross-party group of MPs and the Good Law Project, who say the GWPF is not a charity, but rather a political lobbying group.
Abbott, who was appointed as a trade adviser to the UK during Liz Truss’s term as secretary of state, has been a supporter of the GWPF since at least 2017, when he gave a speech to the organisation in which he said climate change was “probably doing good”.
As prime minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015, Abbott’s centre-right Liberal Party was widely seen as hostile to climate policy.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, told DeSmog Abbott would “find himself at home” at the GWPF.
“Tony Abbott’s government ignored the science of climate change and remained focused on a backward-looking agenda for the Australian power system and economy. He will no doubt find himself at home with lots of other blokes at the Global Warming Policy Foundation who have a backward-looking agenda for the UK’s economy,” Ward said.
Abbott will sit on the board alongside two other recent additions: Lord David Frost, former minister of state, and Michael John Cole, a businessman who claims there is “no causal link” between human-made carbon emissions and global warming.
Jerome Booth, the GWPF chairman, said the appointment brought “a global perspective and policy insight at the very highest level” and would “further assist our objectives and help our efforts to foster a culture of debate, respect and scrutiny in policy areas that are currently dominated by intolerance, high emotions, moral reasoning and confusion”.
DeSmog has approached the GWPF and Tony Abbott for comment.