NEW YORK (Reuters) ? News Corp nominated Silicon Valley venture capitalist Jim Breyer to its board, while two directors will leave, moves that come after corporate governance experts slammed the media company board's independence in the wake of a UK phone hacking scandal.
Kenneth Crowley, who is stepping down, has been an associate of News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch for nearly 50 years and has been on the board since 1979.
Thomas Perkins, a partner of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has been on the board since 1996 and publicly backed Murdoch's management in recent weeks as the board had come under pressure because of the hacking scandal, which has rocked the company to its core.
Perkins in 2006 left the board of Hewlett Packard in protest because of a scandal in which the company spied on directors and journalists to find information leaks.
Breyer, a partner at Accel Partners, is best known as one of the early investors in Facebook and also sits on the boards of Wal-Mart Stores and Dell Inc.
If Breyer is elected as a director, the board would shrink by one seat to 15 directors. It was unclear if News Corp would nominate another director to return to 16-member board.
Earlier this year, the board was expected to expand to 17 when Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth was set to become the fourth Murdoch family member to join the board.
Following the furor surrounding the phone hacking scandal which erupted in July, Elisabeth Murdoch and the board decided not to pursue the nomination.
The shuffle comes as a regulatory filing showed that Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch's total compensation rose by 47 percent to $33.3 million in the 2011 fiscal year.
(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke. Editing by Derek Caney and Robert MacMillan)
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