Who Owns The Times?

The Times is owned by News Corp, the Murdoch family’s publishing company — and since the September 2025 family settlement, control rests with Lachlan Murdoch alone, under a trust running to 2050. Companies House records Times Newspapers Limited under News Corp UK & Ireland Limited, and preserves a rare direct name swap: two companies exchanged the names Times Newspapers Limited and Times Media Limited with each other. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Times?

The publisher is TIMES NEWSPAPERS LIMITED (05197622), incorporated 4 August 2004 and registered at London Bridge Street. Its person with significant control is News Corp UK & Ireland Limited, at 75% or more of shares and votes with the right to appoint and remove directors.

Above that sits News Corp, listed in New York, and above that the Murdoch family trust.

The name history is the cleanest swap this site has found. Times Newspapers Limited (05197622) was previously named Times Media Limited. Times Media Limited (00894646, incorporated 22 December 1966) was previously named Times Newspapers Limited. The two companies exchanged names with each other — not a name released and reused years later, but a straight swap.

Any document referring to “Times Newspapers Limited” is therefore ambiguous without a date and a company number.

Parent company and ownership structure

News Corp owns the British newspapers through News Corp UK & Ireland Limited — the company that trades as News UK.

News Corp is listed on Nasdaq with Class A shares carrying no vote and Class B shares that do. The Murdoch interests hold the Class B stock, so most shareholders have no say in governance — the same structure this site documents at Fox Corporation and Paramount.

The September 2025 settlement resolved years of litigation over the family trust. Lachlan Murdoch became sole decision-maker; Prudence MacLeod, Elisabeth Murdoch and James Murdoch ceased to be beneficiaries, taking a reported $1.1bn each. A new holding company under Lachlan’s control holds about 33.1% of News Corp’s Class B, and the arrangement runs to 2050.

So the ownership of Britain’s newspaper of record was settled, for a quarter of a century, by a family agreement in a Nevada court.

Major shareholders or controlling interests

Beyond the family holding, News Corp’s Class A shares sit with institutions and retail investors who cannot vote them.

The other significant holder is the Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding, historically a substantial shareholder in the Murdoch companies, though its position has changed over time.

The Times has one further protection with no equivalent at most newspapers. When Rupert Murdoch bought it in 1981, the sale was cleared without a full monopolies referral on condition of undertakings guaranteeing editorial independence, enforced by a board of independent national directors whose consent is required to appoint or remove the editor.

Those undertakings are a regulatory instrument, not a feature of the share register — and they are the reason ownership and editorial control are formally separated at The Times in a way they are not at The Sun.

Other media assets in the group

News Corp owns The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, TalkTV and Times Radio in Britain; The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and the New York Post in America; HarperCollins in publishing; and REA Group and Realtor.com in property listings.

Fox News is not in this group. It belongs to Fox Corporation, a separate listed company under the same family control, covered separately on this site. The two split in 2013 and were never rejoined.

Sky is not in the group either — Fox lost it to Comcast in the 2018 blind auction. And the Telegraph has never been a Murdoch title, despite recurring speculation.

Ownership history

The Times was founded in 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, taking its present name in 1788.

• 1908 — bought by Lord Northcliffe.
• 1922 — passes to the Astor family.
• 1966 — bought by Roy Thomson; the register still carried Thomson Newspapers as a former name on Times Newspapers Holdings Limited until that company was dissolved in 2024.
• 1978–79 — the paper is shut down for eleven months in a dispute with the print unions.
• 1981 — Rupert Murdoch buys The Times and Sunday Times, subject to the editorial undertakings.
• 1986 — the move to Wapping and the year-long dispute that broke the print unions.
• 2013 — News Corporation splits; the newspapers go to News Corp.
• September 2025 — the family settlement.

The 1981 sale is the one that still shapes the paper. It was cleared without referral to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission on the basis that The Times was failing — a judgement contested at the time, and the reason the editorial undertakings exist at all.

Sources and verification

Both company numbers, the 1966 and 2004 incorporations, the swapped previous names and the News Corp UK & Ireland PSC entry are Companies House records and can be checked directly.

The register also carries a filing curiosity worth explaining. Times Newspapers Limited filed a statement on 13 September 2016 that it had “not yet completed taking reasonable steps” to identify its controllers, and withdrew it the same day. That is the third of the three PSC statement types — distinct from “no registrable person” and from “person not identified” — and it means only that the company had not finished checking, not that anything was concealed.

Two limits. The register names News Corp UK & Ireland Limited and stops, so News Corp itself and the Murdoch trust are established through SEC filings and the Nevada proceedings, not any British document. And a trust is where ownership becomes hardest to state — the register names the holding company, not the beneficiaries. Companies House does not verify most filed information.