Rupert Murdoch, who this week told how Margaret Thatcher was an inspiration to him, is currently not planning to attend the former prime minister's funeral.
MediaGuardian understands Murdoch will be unable to pay his last respects to the late Conservative prime minister at St Paul's Cathedral on Wednesday because it clashes with a long-standing News Corporation board meeting in New York.
However, Murdoch, who paid tribute to the contribution Thatcher made to his successful battle with the print unions during the Wapping industrial dispute in the mid 1980s, may yet reschedule his meeting, according to a company insider. "This may change," the source said.
Murdoch's absence from the cathedral could be been seen as a snub to Thatcher, given the role she played in allowing him to grow his business in the UK.
His 1981 acquisition of the Times and Sunday Times was waved through without a referral to competition regulators following a secret meeting with Thatcher, more details of which have only recently emerged.
"I found her attitude an inspiration to my business life – and never more so than when faced with the recalcitrance of the print unions in the 1980s," Murdoch wrote in the Times earlier this week.
All editors of national newspapers, including Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, a paper which was a staunch critic of Thatcher during her 11-and-a-half year reign, have been invited to the funeral, Downing Street has confirmed.
All the proprietors of the major UK national newspaper groups have also been invited, setting the stage for one of the most powerful media gatherings at a major public event since Princess Diana's funeral in 1997.
They include Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, Telegraph Media Group chairman Aidan Barclay, and Evgeny Lebedev, who runs the Independent titles and London Evening Standard on behalf of his father Alexander.
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