Rupert Murdoch set for $3.7m pay rise after News Corp split The Australian-born executive will still, however, reap considerable awards from the publishing arm, where he will be chairman and Wall Street Journal publisher Robert Thomson is lined up to be chief executive. Mr Murdoch will receive up to $5m a year, including a base salary of $1m and up to $4m under its bonus scheme and a long-term incentive plan. News Corp said in a filing with America's Securities and Exchange Commission that it was restructuring Mr Murdoch's pay so that it was more closely linked to the performance of the two companies he will be in charge of. His total package "for new News Corp and for Fox, both individually and in aggregate, is competitive and appropriate given Mr Murdoch's responsibilities associated with two separate public companies," it said. The set-up is "commensurate to his strategic role with new News Corporation" and "will further align Mr Murdoch's compensation with the interests of stockholders," it added. Mr Murdoch had vehemently resisted calls to split News Corp before the hacking scandal shook the media empire in 2011. However, he put a brave face on and hailed it as "the right thing to do" when the axe finally fell. The decision to split News Corp, announced last summer, marked an end to Mr Murdoch's 30-year project to build a coherent, global media business spanning newspaper, books, film and television. It pleased many shareholders who had long been campaigning for a split in order to stop the slower-growth publishing assets from acting as a drag on the highly profitable television empire. Had the new News Corp been a standalone company last year, it would have lost $2.08bn on $9.14bn of sales, following $2.8bn of writedowns on its damaged newspapers. However, the company will begin with around $1bn in cash on its balance sheet, and will include Fox Sport Australia - an anomoly which could prove a useful source of cash in the future.