MUMBAI: Global media conglomerate News Corporation has suspended the voting rights of a portion of Class B Common Stock owned by foreigners in order to comply with U.S law that restricts foreign holdings and voting powers to be within 25 per cent.

The company asserted that the suspension of voting rights will not impact the rights of Non-U.S. Stockholders to receive dividends and distributions.

The decision to curtail voting rights was taken as the company discovered that foreign investors held a total of 36 per cent Class B Common Stock well above the permissible limit. The voting rights of 50 per cent of the Class B Common Stock held by Non-U.S. Stockholders was suspended immediately.

The remedial measure comes as the company, which owns and operates the popular Fox network channels, seeks to renew licenses for its 27 TV stations.

The company‘s 27 owned-and-operated stations and the Fox Broadcasting Company together generated $4.8 billion in revenue and $681 million in operating profit in fiscal 2011.

Accordingly, after the suspension of voting rights, the aggregate percentage vote of the Murdoch Family Interests will remain initially at 39.7 per cent of the outstanding shares of Class B Common Stock not subject to the suspension of voting rights.

According to Wall Street Journal, News Corp.‘s largest foreign investor is Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has about 7 per cent of the voting stock.

Station owners are required to file biannual reports to the FCC that provide information on ownership interests, including foreign owners with a significant stake.

The disclosure comes in the backdrop of the multiple scandals that rocked the company in UK. Television regulator Ofcom is scrutinising whether James Murdoch and News Corp. are "fit and proper" persons to be in control of BSkyB, the company that runs Sky TV.

MUMBAI: It was a day of double whammy for media conglomerate News Corp as British lawyer Mark Lewis, who has been pursuing the phone hacking scandal, said that he planned to take the case to United States, the centre of Murdoch?s global media empire.

However, the bigger threat for Murdoch comes from a British Parliamentary report into a phone hacking scandal which may lead eventually to News Corp being forced into cutting or selling its stake in the highly profitable pay-TV firm BSkyB, according to newswire Reuters.

Lewis said he would take legal action on behalf of three people which includes two sportsperson and an American citizen.

?The News of the World had thousands of people they hacked. Some of them were in America at the time, either traveling or resident there," he said.

Lewis?s clients also include the family of Milly Dowler, an abducted teenager who was murdered in 2002, and whose voice mail was said to have been hacked after she disappeared.

Coming back to the Parliamentary panel?s report on the hacking scandal, the Reuters report says that the Parliament?s culture committee is widely expected to criticise News Corp in its long-awaited report.

The report also says that the panel?s criticism could raise possibilities that the British broadcast watchdog Ofcom will take action against Rupert Murdoch?s media conglomerate.

The culture select committee could publish its findings and recommendations into the scandal by the end of April to which the government must respond within two months.

Ofcom is already conducting its own investigation into News Corp and BSkyB?s directors to ensure that directors of TV companies are "fit and proper" to hold a broadcast licence.

Earlier this month, James Murdoch had stepped down as the chairman of BSkyB. However, he continues to remain a board member. In February, the Jr Murdoch had stepped down as executive chairman of News International that is being probed by UK authorities for phone hacking surrounding its now defunct News of the World paper.

MUMBAI: Under fire over the phone hacking scandal, James Murdoch is likely to step down as the chairman of News Corp?s British sports broadcasting business unit, BSkyB, according to a report by Sky News.

Quoting unidentified sources, the news broadcaster said Murdoch was due to attend a board meeting on Tuesday and is expected to stand down from his position as chairman with immediate effect.

BSkyB?s senior non-executive director Nick Ferguson is tipped to replace Jr Murdoch, who will continue to remain on BSkyB?s board as a non-executive director.

It was only in February that the Jr Murdoch stepped down as executive chairman of News International that is being probed by UK authorities for phone hacking surrounding its now defunct News of the World paper. Jr. Murdoch, though, has denied any knowledge of wrongdoing by the News of the World staff, a claim that hasn?t cut much ice.

To firewall him from the likely impact of the scandal, News Corp had relocated him to New York headquarters as the deputy COO of the parent company.

Jr. Murdoch had last month further cut off all remaining ties with News International, the UK publishing business of News Corp, by resigning from the boards of Times Newspaper Holdings; News Corp Investments; and News International Publishers Limited.

More importantly, the decision to step down from BSkyB comes ahead of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee?s report into allegations of phone hacking by the end of the month. James is also expected to appear before the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics with his father Rupert Murdoch at the end of the month.

The British media regulator Ofcom is already evaluating whether James Murdoch is ?fit and proper? to hold a broadcast license on behalf of BSkyB.

MUMBAI: Facing heat over alleged use of piracy to scuttle business of pay-TV rival ITV Digital, News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch vented his anger on social networking platform Twitter by terming the allegations as baseless.

"Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels. So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing," Murdoch said on his Twitter handle @rupertmurdoch.

According to a BBC Panorama documentary, a company part-owned by News Corp carried out hacking by obtaining codes belonging to ITV Digital and posted them to allow viewers to watch for free which finally led to the demise of Sky?s main digital TV rival, ITV Digital.

NDS, which manufactured smartcards for all News Corp pay-TV companies across the world, said that Thoic was legitimately used to gather intelligence on hackers while Gibling worked as a consultant.

The publication of codes resulted in widespread piracy which finally resulted in the demise of ITV Digital, which had been set-up by Britain?s leading free-to-air commercial broadcaster, in 1998.

In a statement late on Wednesday, News Corp President Chase Carey said the BBC programme presented "manipulated and mischaracterised emails to produce unfair and baseless accusations", and he backed NDS?s call for the publicly owned British broadcaster to retract them.

The piracy scandal came as a second blow to the already beleagured News Corp as it had hardly recovered from the phone hacking scandal involving its UK publishing unit, News International.

The media conglomerate is under tremendous pressure as it is already under television regulator Ofcom?s scanner which is scrutinising whether James Murdoch and News Corporation are "fit and proper" persons to be in control of BSkyB, the company that runs Sky TV.

MUMBAI: Even as the dust on phone hacking controversy has hardly settled, another scandal is rocking Rupert Murdoch?s News Corporation that has put the company?s business operations in that country at risk.

According to a BBC documentary, a company part-owned by News Corporation carried out hacking by obtaining codes belonging to ITV Digital and posted them to allow viewers to watch for free which finally led to the demise of Sky?s main digital TV rivals ITV Digital.

Lee Gibling, who had set up a website The House of Ill-Compute or Thoic in 1990s, said News Corp-owned NDS had funded expansion of the Thoic site and later had him distribute the set-top pay-TV codes of rival ITV Digital.

ITV Digital?s former chief technical officer, Simon Dore, told the programme that piracy was the killer blow for the business. "The business had its issues aside from the piracy... but those issues I believe would have been solvable by careful and good management. The real killer, the hole beneath the water line, was the piracy. We couldn?t recover from that,? he stated.

NDS, which was recently acquired by Cisco for $5 billion, though denied the allegation by saying that Thoic was legitimately used to gather intelligence on hackers while Gibling worked as a consultant. NDS manufactures smartcards for all News Corp pay-TV companies across the world.

Incidentally, James Murdoch was the non-executive director of NDS when the scandal took place. However, BBC did not find any evidence of his involvement. The Junior Murdoch had recently stepped down from all posts of controversy-ridden News International, the UK publishing business of the company.

The company?s justification notwithstanding, Gibling has said that although Thoic was in his name the website actually belonged to NDS, which according to Gibling was also used to defeat the electronic countermeasures that the ITV used to try to stop the piracy.

Furthermore, the new codes created by ITV Digital were also sent out to other piracy websites so that consumers don?t buy even a single card.

"We wanted people to be able to update these cards themselves, we didn?t want them buying a single card and then finding they couldn?t get channels. We wanted them to stay and keep with On Digital, flogging it until it broke,? Gibling revealed further.

No sooner did the allegations surface calls for probe started growing louder with Tom Watson, a member of parliament and who has been examining the phone-hacking scandal, being the leading voice.

"Clearly allegations of TV hacking are far more serious than phone hacking," he said. "It seems inconceivable that they (Ofcom) would not want to look at these new allegations. Ofcom are now applying the fit and proper person test to Rupert and James Murdoch. It also seems inconceivable to me that if these allegations are true that Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch will pass that test."

Already, television regulator Ofcom is scrutinising whether James Murdoch and News Corporation are "fit and proper" persons to be in control of BSkyB, the company that runs Sky TV.

MUMBAI: Close on the heels of stepping down as the executive chairman of the News International, James Murdoch has further severed all remaining ties with the controversy-ridden British newspaper business.

James has resigned from three more boards: Times Newspaper Holdings, which was set up to guarantee the independence of the Times of London and the Sunday Times when News Corp acquired the titles in 1981; Newscorp Investments; and News International Publishers Limited.

Post his stepping down as the executive chairman of NI, the junior Murdoch has relocated to News Corp?s headquarters in New York as the deputy chief operating officer to focus on the broadcast business.

News International, the publisher of now defunct News of the World, is under investigation from authorities over phone and computer hacking and bribery.

James? future at BSkyB, the UK sports broadcasting arm of Newscorp, hinges on the Parliament committee?s report on the scandal for which he has been questioned twice, once with his father Rupert Murdoch.

The British media regulator Ofcom will take the parliamentary report into consideration when evaluating whether James is ?fit and proper? to hold a broadcast licence on behalf of BSkyB.