
Longtime Rupert Murdoch ally Rebekah Brooks took home a package worth more than £7 million when she was forced to resign last year amid the British phone-hacking scandal, the Financial Times reports. In addition to cash and pension, the former News International CEO received an allowance for a chauffeur and legal fees, for when she faces charges of obstructing justice next year. More immediately, the Murdochs will likely be forced to defend the extra-cushy arrangement — far more generous than initial reports of Brooks’s £1.7 million cash payout — at News Corp.’s annual meeting tomorrow in L.A., where minority shareholders will once again, as a still-futile symbolic gesture, question the ruling family’s leadership.