James wins Murdoch succession race

For more than a decade, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, 76, has put his three elder children through an endless succession of challenges to see which of them is worthy of taking over the multi-billion-dollar business, which includes Twentieth Century Fox, the Times and Sun newspapers, Fox TV, Sky TV and - the latest addition - the Wall Street Journal. Now a winner appears to have emerged as James, 34, the baby of the bunch, has leapfrogged sister Elisabeth and brother Lachlan to be appointed to oversee European and Asian operations of News Corp, the parent group for all Murdoch companies.

Previously both of James's siblings had seemed poised to grasp the crown only to disappear into relative obscurity. Elisabeth, 39, bailed out of a high-profile job at BSkyB to become an independent TV producer, while 36-year-old Lachlan worked his way through the newspaper side of the operation before resigning for personal reasons in 2005. James, meanwhile, has been slaving away as chief executive of BSkyB since 2003.

Their father, a self-proclaimed meritocrat who has long fought off accusations of nepotism about the promotion of his children within the 'family firm', made the announcement about James's future yesterday along with a raft of other changes prompted by the WSJ takeover. The chairman of the newspaper arm in the UK, Les Hinton, has been made chief executive of the WSJ, while the London Times editor Robert Thomson is widely tipped to become the publisher of the WSJ, leaving the prestigious editor's chair at the Times open for the paper's business editor James Harding.

The move of all his key troops to New York positions signals the gravity of Murdoch's desire to take on the New York Times.