Murdoch’s BSkyB is “fit and proper”

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:22:00 +0000

LONDON — British Sky Broadcasting is a “fit and proper” company to hold an operating license, U.K. regulators said Thursday in response to the phone hacking scandal that engulfed the parent company. But it criticized the former CEO and chairman, James Murdoch, for poor management.

The company’s license was called into question because of the scandal at a newspaper owned by News Corp., which effectively controls BSkyB through a 39 percent shareholding.

If the company had not be found “fit and proper” it could have been stripped of the license that yielded a net profit of $1.4 billion in the year ending June 30.

The Office of Communications, known as Ofcom, concluded that James Murdoch was not complicit in a cover up at the tabloid News of the World, but his failure to initiate appropriate action on a number of occasions was “difficult to comprehend and ill-judged.”

The report also found no evidence that Rupert Murdoch, James’ father and CEO of News Corp., “acted in a way that was inappropriate in relation to phone hacking, concealment or corruption by employees” of his British newspapers.

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Murdoch’s BSkyB is “fit and proper”