Schadenfreude is finally at hand for Lachlan Murdoch.
Nearly 11 years to the day since Rupert Murdoch's long time lieutenant, Roger Ailes, drove Lachlan from the family business, it is Lachlan who is negotiating Ailes' exit after a sexual harassment scandal that even the Fox News boss could not survive.
![Rupert Murdoch at St Bride's Church in London with his sons James.](/web/20160727054451im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/3/1/t/t/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gq9jzp.png/1469195713733.jpg)
"I have to do my own thing," Lachlan reportedly told Rupert after deciding to quit News Corp and return to Australia in July 2005. "I have to be my own man."
The trigger had been Ailes going behind Lachlan's back, yet again, and getting Rupert to back a new show which Lachlan had put on the backburner.
![Lachlan and James Murdoch: They now need to turn their restructuring attention to Fox News.](/web/20160727054451im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/3/1/t/w/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gq9jzp.png/1469142839771.jpg)
It was the final straw for Lachlan. Murdoch's biographer Michael Wolff detailed the glee with which Ailes and another Rupert lieutenant, Peter Chernin, boasted about pushing Lachlan out of the business.
The two men described him as "callow, insubstantial".
Ailes ended up with an office right next to Rupert. No need to guess whose office it used to be.
He gloated to a Fox News producer: "Do you know whose chair I'm sitting in? I'm sitting in Lachlan Murdoch's chair."
![The terms of Roger Ailes's exit package have not been made public.](/web/20160727054451im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/9/d/s/v/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gq9jzp.png/1469148252505.jpg)
It took close to a decade for Lachlan return. In 2014, he was appointed co-chairman at the two Murdoch media empires created by the split following the UK phone hacking scandal.
Lachlan's years in the wilderness proved to be a mixed bag.
![Illustration: John Shakespeare.](/web/20160727054451im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/9/s/u/x/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gq9jzp.png/1469142839771.jpg)
While News Corp prospered from his decision to acquire most of the online real estate business REA, Lachlan nearly blew his inheritance on a deal with James Packer that would have been almost as disastrous as their foray into mobile telecommunications with One.Tel.
Packer had agreed to privatise his family flagship company, Consolidated Media Holdings, with Lachlan in a $3.3 billion deal hatched as soon as Lachlan's non-compete with his family company expired.
It was only when Packer upped his asking price at the last minute that the deal was scuttled.
Lachlan and Packer's follow-up plan took them on a media adventure with the Ten Network. They have lost a modest fortune on the network, by billionaire standards, although Murdoch did manage to salvage his reputation with some savvy radio deals at what is now Nova Entertainment.
That is history now.
Two years after Lachlan's return to the family's media empires, the departure of Ailes will remove one of the last bastions of resistance to the takeover of the family business by Lachlan and his younger brother James.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article has been amended to remove an incorrect reference to a financial transaction, and to alter a description about the circumstances of Roger Ailes' departure.