Matthew Freud | |
|---|---|
 Freud in 2017 | |
| Born | 2 November 1963 |
| Education | Westminster School |
| Occupation | Public relations executive |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | 5 |
| Parents | |
Matthew Freud (born 2 November 1963) is head of Freud Communications, an international public relations firm in the United Kingdom.
Freud is the son of the actress June Flewett and the writer and German-born British politician Sir Clement Freud. Matthew Freud's sister is television interviewer Emma Freud. His great-grandfather was Sigmund Freud. He is the nephew of the artist Lucian Freud and (by former marriage) of the writer Lady Caroline Blackwood, and his cousins include fashion designer Bella Freud, and novelists Susie Boyt, and Esther Freud. [1]
Matthew Freud founded Freud Communications in 1985. [2] Adam Curtis in his documentary Century of the Self describes Matthew Freud as a star in the "new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism" that rose in the Clinton-Blair years. [3] In 2009 PRWeek called Freud "the most influential PR professional in the UK". [4]
Freud, his sister Emma and brother-in-law Richard Curtis, sit on the board of Trustees for Comic Relief. [5]
In May 2005, in partnership with Piers Morgan, he acquired ownership of the Press Gazette and the British Press Awards in a deal worth £1million. [6] [7] Several major newspapers boycotted the event citing an apparent conflict of interest as one of the reasons. [8] [9]
According to the Sunday Times Rich List in 2020, Freud is worth an estimated £170 million, a decrease of £10m from the previous year. [10]
Freud's first wife was Caroline Hutton with whom he had two sons: George Rupert Freud and Jonah Henry Freud. Caroline then married the 9th Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, from whom she was divorced in 2007.
His second wife was Elisabeth Murdoch, second daughter of media magnate Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation. When the couple met in 1997, [11] she was pregnant with a second child by her first husband and business partner, Elkin Pianim (the son of Ghanaian financial and political mogul Kwame Pianim). The couple married 18 August 2001 at Blenheim Palace; [12] they have two children, a daughter born in 2000 and a son born in 2007. [13] They divorced in 2014. [14] During the divorce, it emerged that Freud had fathered a child with a mutual friend two years previously, born in 2012.[ citation needed ]
In November 2012, Freud was banned from driving for six months and fined £830 after police caught him driving at 117 miles per hour (188 km/h) in a borrowed Ferrari on the M5 motorway. His son was asleep in the front of the car at the time of the offence. Exeter Magistrates' Court was told that he had already incurred nine penalty points on his driving licence in the previous three years–two fixed penalties for speeding and one for using a mobile phone while driving. [15]
He is a friend of several members of the Conservative party, including George Osborne and David Cameron. Freud has also invited Cameron to many events and is part of the so-called 'Notting Hill Set' of influential Conservative-linked figures. During their marriage, Murdoch and Freud owned Burford Priory in Oxfordshire, and hence were also considered members of the Chipping Norton set. [16]
Keith Rupert Murdoch is an Australian-born American business magnate, investor, and media proprietor. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK, in Australia, in the US, book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News. He was also the owner of Sky, 21st Century Fox, and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of US$21.7 billion as of 2 March 2022, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world according to Forbes magazine.
Sir Clement Raphael Freud was a German-born British broadcaster, writer, politician and chef. The son of Ernst L. Freud and grandson of Sigmund Freud, Clement moved to the United Kingdom from Nazi Germany as a child and later worked as a prominent chef and food writer. He became known to a wider audience as a television and radio personality. Freud was the longest serving panellist on the BBC Radio 4 panel show Just a Minute, appearing in each of the first 143 episodes, and making subsequent regular appearances up until his death in 2009.
News Corp UK & Ireland Limited is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher of The Times, The Sunday Times, and The Sun newspapers; its former publications include the Today, News of the World, and The London Paper newspapers. It was established in February 1981 under the name News International plc. In June 2002, the company name was changed to News International Limited, and on 31 May 2011, to NI Group Limited, and on 26 June 2013 to News UK.
James Rupert Jacob Murdoch is a British-American businessman. He is the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the former chief executive officer (CEO) of 21st Century Fox from 2015 to 2019.
Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan is an English broadcaster, journalist, writer, and media personality. He began his career in 1988 at the tabloid The Sun. In 1994, at the age of 29, he was appointed editor of the News of the World by Rupert Murdoch, which made him the youngest editor of a British national newspaper in more than half a century. From 1995, Morgan edited the Daily Mirror, but was fired in 2004. He was the editorial director of First News from 2006 to 2007. In 2014, Morgan became the first editor-at-large of the MailOnline website's US operation.
Wendi Deng Murdoch is a Chinese-born American entrepreneur, investor, film producer, and collector of Chinese contemporary art.
Rebekah Mary Brooks is a British media executive and former journalist and newspaper editor. She has been chief executive officer of News UK since 2015. She was previously CEO of News International from 2009 to 2011 and was the youngest editor of a British national newspaper at News of the World, from 2000 to 2003, and the first female editor of The Sun, from 2003 to 2009. Brooks married actor Ross Kemp in 2002. They divorced in 2009 and she married former racehorse trainer and author Charlie Brooks.
Elisabeth Murdoch is an Australian-born British and American media executive based in the United Kingdom. She was a non-executive chairperson of Shine Group, the UK-based TV programme production company she founded in 2001, until the company's parent 21st Century Fox merged its Shine Group division with Apollo Global Management's Endemol and Core Media production houses, specializing in reality TV, in 2015. She is the daughter of the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.
Andrews Kwame Pianim is a Ghanaian financier and former government official in the NPP government. He was CEO of New World Investments, a company he co-founded in 1995. After ten years as a political prisoner, he made a 1996 bid to run for the presidency of Ghana on the ticket of the NPP but lost to the former President J.A. Kufuor.
Press Gazette, formerly known as UK Press Gazette (UKPG), is a British trade magazine dedicated to journalism and the press. First published in 1965, it had a circulation of about 2,500 before becoming online-only in 2013. Published with the strapline "Future of Media", it covers news about newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and the online press, dealing with launches, closures, moves, legislation and technological advances affecting journalists.
The British Press Awards is an annual ceremony that has celebrated the best of British journalism since the 1970s. A financially lucrative part of the Press Gazette's business, they have been described as "the Oscars of British journalism", or less flatteringly, "The Hackademy Awards".
PRWeek is a trade magazine and news website for the public relations and wider communications industry. It is published by Haymarket Media Group.
Freud Communications Limited is a public relations firm based in London. It was founded in 1985 by Matthew Freud. He is the great-grandson of the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who himself was the uncle of Edward Bernays, the Austrian-American pioneer of public relations.
Employees of the now-defunct newspaper News of the World engaged in phone hacking, police bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of stories.
Burford Priory is a Grade I listed country house and former priory at Burford in West Oxfordshire, England owned by Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert Murdoch, together with Matthew Freud.
The Chipping Norton set is a group of media, political and show-business acquaintances who have homes near the market town of Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, England. Chipping Norton is located approximately 75 miles from London. The group gained media attention in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal, which directly involved members of the group.
Kate Garvey is an English public relations executive and a former aide to British prime minister Tony Blair. She is a co-founder of Project Everyone, a communications and campaigning agency promoting the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
Members of the Murdoch family are prominent international media magnates and media tycoons with roots in Australia and the United Kingdom, along with their media assets in the United States. Some members have also been prominent in the arts, clergy, and military.
FGS Global is a strategic advisory and communications consultancy formed in 2021 by the merger of Finsbury Glover Hering and Sard Verbinnen & Co. It is a subsidiary of British advertising and media conglomerate WPP plc.
The Political Secretary to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is a senior official in the United Kingdom Civil Service who advises the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Established by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, but continued by subsequent Prime Ministers, the Political Secretary was originally not a civil servant, but was later incorporated into the Civil Service.
