Richard Searby
Australian QC who as 1980s chairman of News Corp provided cool counsel to Rupert Murdoch
RICHARD SEARBY, who has died aged 87, was a prominent Australian lawyer who chaired Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and was the media tycoon’s closest confidant through a decade of corporate dramas.
Searby became a director of News Corp, the holding company for Murdoch’s global newspaper and broadcasting interests, in 1977, and played a key behind-the-scenes role in negotiations for the controversial 1981 takeover of Times Newspapers in London, and its aftermath of industrial disputes.
In particular he was credited with bringing an end to disruption by print operatives on the Sunday Times, by citing a precedent from a 1926 Welsh coal-mine strike in which, with no revenue coming in and closure threatened, the proprietor was judged entitled to refuse the wages of the entire workforce and not to be liable for redundancy.
Later that year, Searby became chairman of News Corp. He was quietly at Murdoch’s side through all the episodes that reinforced the tycoon’s formidable reputation in that era – including the 1986 Wapping dispute, in which the Times titles were shifted to new print technology in the face of violent union opposition.
Prior to that, in 1983, he had accompanied Murdoch to the offices of Stern magazine in Germany to view the so-called “Hitler Diaries” – initially authenticated by the historian Hugh Trevor-roper, though he later reversed his opinion – and to negotiate their publication in the Sunday Times. The diaries were swiftly revealed as an elaborate and hugely embarrassing fake, and it was fortunate that Searby had inserted a clause obliging Stern to reimburse the $3million-plus paid by Murdoch for the rights.
The former Sunday Times and Times editor Harry Evans (in whose forced resignation Searby had a hand) offered a vivid cameo in his memoir Good Times, Bad Times: Murdoch’s “problem solver”, he wrote, “is thought in Melbourne to be rather grand and slightly mysterious … he is tall and polished with alligator eyes and sharply defined, sensuous lips. His Australian accent is sharper than Murdoch’s, but his voice is softer.”
That comparison was a fair reflection of their contrasting styles. Searby’s cool counsel provided an effective counterfoil to Murdoch’s hyper-aggressive competitive spirit and heightened appetite for risk. Searby was reported to have told friends that he found the newspaper business “grubby” (though he later denied saying so) and that the key to understanding Murdoch’s modus operandi was that “he’s a fidget, he gets bored with things very quickly”.
At News Corp’s 1990 annual general meeting, the tycoon thanked his chairman for “keeping me out of trouble from time to time”. But by 1992, having survived a financial crisis that almost brought his empire down, Murdoch evidently felt he no longer needed Searby’s advice: the biographer William Shawcross records that he “disposed of ” his long-serving colleague and friend of 50 years by way of a curt note asking for his resignation, delivered by a third party.
Richard Henry Searby was born on July 23 1931 into the upper crust of Melbourne society. His father Henry was a distinguished surgeon and leader of Australia’s medical establishment; his mother Mary received an OBE for her charitable works.
Richard was educated at home by his grandfather (a former headmaster of Melbourne High School) and subsequently at the elite Geelong Grammar School, where he and Rupert Murdoch shared a study and were stars of the school debating society, Murdoch generally taking the Leftist side of the motion. The school’s head, Sir James Darling, recalled Searby as “thoroughly good, responsible and keen – more or less everything you’d want in a boy”.
Searby studied at Melbourne University for a year before travelling to England to read Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he also played real tennis for the university. Murdoch was also in Oxford as an undergraduate at Worcester College and was by now a close friend.
Searby was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1956 and to the Victorian bar in Australia the following year. After a stint as assistant to the chief justice, Sir Owen Dixon, he developed a successful commercial and government practice, lectured at Melbourne University, and took silk in 1971. He became well connected in political circles, notably as an adviser to Malcolm Fraser as prime minister from 1975 to 1983 – and was said to have been shortlisted by Fraser for the vacant post of chief justice in 1981.
But Searby preferred to develop his business portfolio. Besides News Corp and several of its key subsidiaries, he was a director of Rio Tinto, Shell Australia, Woodside Petroleum and the winemaker BRL Hardy. In later years he was chancellor of Deakin University (whose campuses are in and around Melbourne), chairman of Geelong Grammar School and president of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 2006 for his educational work.
Richard Searby married Caroline Mcadam, a doctor’s daughter, in 1962; they shared a particular love of Jane Austen, often reading her novels aloud to each other. Caroline died in 2014 and he is survived by their three sons.
Richard Searby, born July 23 1931, died August 8 2018