After a few months of “will he or won’t he” speculation, James Murdoch informed Sotheby’s that he won’t be seeking re-election to the board of the auction house. The son of embattled media mogul Rupert Murdoch has served on the house’s board for two years. He will step down in order to focus on his responsibilities as deputy chief officer of the scandal-ridden News Corp, according to a regulatory filing. The decision comes after several major organizations publicly called for Murdoch to leave his post due to his association in News Corp’s explosive phone-hacking scandal.
“James Murdoch has been a valued member of Sotheby’s board and during his tenure Sotheby’s has benefited greatly from his broad-based marketing and brand management experience, his guidance regarding the company’s strategic initiatives in Asia, and his insight into digital media, among other things,” the auction house stated in the filing. “Sotheby’s will seek to find opportunities to continue to engage with Mr. Murdoch in the areas of his expertise.” Murdoch will officially leave his post after the annual shareholders meeting on May 8.
This isn’t the first high-profile position Murdoch has stepped away from in recent months. In January, he resigned from the board of drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline and last month, he stepped down from his post as executive chairman of News Corp’s U.K. publishing arm, News International. He currently remains on the board of British Sky Broadcasting Group, though a forthcoming report from British Parliament detailing Murdoch’s involvement with the scandal may threaten his position there as well, according to Businessweek.
Calls for Murdoch to step down from Sotheby’s board began in September, when union president George Miranda, who has overseen the house’s ongoing contract negotiations with its locked-out art handlers, noted that Murdoch’s position showed that “risk management is clearly not a priority for Sotheby’s executives or board of directors.” In January, CtW Investment Group, an advisor to union-sponsored pension funds with more than $200 billion in assets, told Bloomberg that the phone-hacking scandal rattling News Corp made Murdoch “ill-suited for service” on the board of Sotheby’s.