Lachlan Murdoch to take the reins of Rupert Murdoch's Conglomerate

Rupert Murdoch's announcement that he will hand over control of his global media empire to his son Lachlan has created uncertainty in the group's British media, including the tabloid The Sun. Concerns about the future of the empire's UK arm centre on Lachlan's ties to Britain, which are widely regarded as much weaker than his father's.

Murdoch's News Corp also owns influential Conservative-leaning newspapers in the UK, including the Times and the Sunday Times, in addition to The Sun. The 92-year-old billionaire's media conglomerate is comprised of two legs: News Corporation and Fox Corporation.

The UK arm last year also launched the right-wing television station TalkTV. The handover will see Murdoch becoming honorary president of the two companies in mid-November.

Born in 1931 in Australia, Rupert Murdoch studied at Oxford University before returning in the late 1960s to buy the weekly News of the World and The Sun, making him a hugely influential figure in British political life. His second wife Anna Torv was also a Scottish-born journalist.

Lachlan Murdoch, 52, was born in the United Kingdom but raised in the United States and began his career in Australia. He was previously the president of Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, and was primarily in charge of the group's US operations. The handover of power to a successor who appears to have little personal ties to the United Kingdom has inevitably raised some eyebrows.

"The inevitable appointment of Lachlan is bad news for the London arm (he hasn't visited here in ten years)," former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie wrote in a Spectator column on Thursday.