BSkyB shares fall as James Murdoch addresses Leveson Mr Hunt was given the quasi-legal job of deciding BSkyB's fate in December 2010, after the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, was stripped of the role for telling two undercover Daily Telegraph reporters he had "declared war on Mr Murdoch." The emails suggest Mr Hunt had a generally favourable view of the BSkyB takeover deal before he was appointed the impartial judge of whether the takeover should go ahead. Mr Hunt had personally met James Murdoch, Rupert's son, on several occasions to discuss issues such as media regulation and spoken to him at least twice on the phone. He also said the Culture Secretary was not giving anything confidential away to the News Corp lobbying team. "There's no special information or anything like that in there," he said. News Corp's planned takeover of BSkyB, in which it already had a stake, collapsed in July 2011 after the phone-hacking scandal surrounding the media group's News of the World title deepened. Bookmaker Paddy Power announced via Twitter this afternoon that it had suspended betting on Jeremy Hunt being the next cainet member to leave his post.