Rupert Murdoch files for divorce from wife Wendi Deng

The News Corporation chairman, 82, said in a petition to New York’s supreme court that their 14-year marriage, his third and her second, had “broken down irretrievably” over the past six months.

His separation from Ms Deng, 44, who acted as his gatekeeper and personal bodyguard through the phone-hacking controversy that rocked his empire, shocked the media industry on Thursday.

“I’m absolutely gobsmacked,” Michael Wolff, Mr Murdoch’s biographer, told The Daily Telegraph. “But Wendi once told me that this is his reaction when things go wrong in business or his personal life. He makes a decision and it’s over. He feels bad for a day and then forget about it”.

Mr Murdoch requested that custody of the couple’s daughters Grace, 11, and Chloe, seven, be shared between him and Ms Deng, a Chinese-born graduate of Yale University 38 years his junior.

A prenuptial agreement signed before their 1999 wedding will dictate Ms Deng’s claim to a share of his $11 billion (£7 billion) fortune. His second wife, Anna, received a $1.7 billion divorce settlement.

Aides stressed that the divorce would have no impact on News Corporation, which is controlled by a Murdoch family trust that is to be inherited by the mogul’s four older children when he dies.

Ms Deng made global headlines in July 2011 by slapping a protester who attempted to push a cream pie in Mr Murdoch’s face as he testified on phone-hacking to a parliamentary committee.

It was a typically direct intervention from a woman renowned for her ferocious ambition across business — through News Corporation and solo ventures — and the elite Manhattan social scene.

A former nanny to the couple, who was previously described by a spokesman for the Murdochs as a “disgruntled former employee”, claimed last year that working for Ms Deng was like being in a “war zone”. She “curses Rupert all the time. A lot of f-words. She’s always yelling, crying”, she said. She added: “Everyone who works for her hates her and is scared of her”.

Ms Deng embarrassed her husband early in their marriage by telling an associate in Hong Kong that “Rupert takes Viagra — but he doesn’t really need it,” remarks that made it into the press.

Having grown up poor in Jiangsu, China, she moved to the US in 1988 with an American couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry, who had been working in China and sponsored her through university.

Mr Cherry left his wife for Ms Deng after an affair. They married in 1990 but divorced. Ms Deng then met Mr Murdoch while working at a News Corporation subsidiary in Hong Kong.

They married in June 1999, two weeks after Mr Murdoch divorced Anna, his wife since 1967 and the mother of James, Elisabeth and Lachlan. The mogul was married to Patricia Booker, the mother of his eldest daughter Prudence, for 11 years from 1956.

Recent reports said Ms Deng had “immersed herself” in a circle including Tony Blair, the former prime minister, Nicole Kidman, the actress, and Bono, the singer, and that Mr Murdoch was rarely present.

Tensions are also believed to have mounted between Ms Deng and Mr Murdoch’s older children, who were said by one News Corporation executive only to “do their best to be courteous” around her.

Mr Murdoch and Ms Deng reportedly came close to separating in 2006, when he disclosed in an interview that their daughters would not receive voting rights in the family trust like his older children.

Yet their relationship reportedly strengthened amid the phone-hacking crisis, when Mr Murdoch closed his flagship tabloid, The News of the World, for spying on celebrities and other figures in the public eye.

“But the backdrop is that Rupert is having to deal with a lot of things in his life right now,” said Mr Wolff, his biographer. Mr Murdoch is currently overseeing the splitting of News Corporation into two firms.

Adding intrigue to news of the divorce Robert Peston, the BBC’s business editor, last night tweeted: “Am also told that undisclosed reasons for Murdoch divorcing Deng are jaw-dropping.”

A spokesman for Mr Murdoch in New York declined to comment on why the relationship had broken down, whether any third party had been involved or whether Ms Deng would contest the petition.