Matthew Freud

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.

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. Many major newspapers boycotted the event citing an apparent conflict of interest as one of the reasons.

His second wife was Elisabeth Murdoch, second daughter of media magnate Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation. When the couple began dating (while working as colleagues), 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, and divorced in 2014. They have two children, Charlotte Emma Freud, born 17 November 2000, and Samson Murdoch Freud, born 13 January 2007. During the divorce, it emerged that Freud had fathered a child with a mutual friend two years previously, born in 2012.

Matthew Freud (born 2 November 1963) is head of Freud Communications, an international public relations firm in the United Kingdom.