Rupert Murdoch resigns from his British newspapers’ boards

After more than a year of scandal in his British newspaper empire, Rupert Murdoch has resigned his directorships in a string of companies that control titles that include The Sun tabloid, The Times and The Sunday Times.

After more than a year of scandal in his British newspaper empire, Rupert Murdoch has resigned his directorships in a string of companies that control titles that include The Sun tabloid, The Times and The Sunday Times, raising fresh speculation that he may be planning for an eventual sale of the newspapers that were a major steppingstone during the decades in which he built his global media empire.

A company spokeswoman said Saturday that Mr. Murdoch, the 81-year-old founder of the News Corporation, resigned last week as a director of the NI Group, the Times Newspaper Holdings, and Newscorp Investments in Britain. Those companies are subsidiaries of the News Corporation, Murdoch’s $53 bn company whose assets include The Wall Street Journal, the Fox Broadcasting television networks and the 20th Century Fox film company.

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Apparently eager to calm disquiet among thousands of staff members at the UK papers, who received an e-mail confirming Murdoch’s moves on Saturday, the company offered assurances that he had no immediate plans to sever their connection to the newspapers.