James packer6/20/2023 ![]() ![]() The rules were quite simple – you stand in your Speedos on the back deck of the yacht with a facemask and a snorkel on your head. “I remember the first night, we had this team Lachlan vs team James, and the competition was called The Snorkel. “It’s basically a drinkathon, you know, it’s a dead-set 24/7 party,” recalls Cross: The trip became exactly the kind of extended party you might expect of a bunch of twenty-somethings on a well-crewed yacht designed to cater to their every whim. ![]() With his younger brother James and friend Joe Cross, Lachlan joined Packer and a few of Packer’s close buddies on two private jets bound for Nadi airport. Would Lachlan and a few mates like to join him for four nights’ cruising off Fiji? It was an offer too good to refuse. James reached out to Lachlan, saying that Kerry had loaned him his 88-metre yacht, the Arctic P. Super League strained their relationship, but by the end of 1996, as the costs piled up, the Murdochs and the Packers were both searching for a compromise, and it was the younger generation who did the groundwork. They were seen dining together and relaxing at Packer’s luxurious weekender at Palm Beach, fifty kilometres north of Sydney. ![]() They had not grown up together, but Lachlan and James went out of their way to cultivate a friendship when the young Murdoch moved to Australia in his early twenties, after graduating from Princeton University in 1994. James Packer, born in Sydney, was four years older than London-born and New York-raised Lachlan Murdoch, but they shared the same birthday: September 8. This edited extract from Paddy Manning’s new biography of Lachlan Murdoch sheds new light on their tumultuous business history. Billionaire media scions Lachlan Murdoch and James Packer have a close friendship which has endured the ups and downs of mega-deals including Australia’s ‘Super League’ war, the collapse of One.Tel, the rise of and failure of Channel Ten – some of the best and worst moments of Lachlan’s career. ![]()
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