Rupert Murdoch is due in London next week, just as his company's attempts to close down the phone hacking crisis are in tatters.

Murdoch tried to keep phone hacking cases out of the courts and out of the public eye through confidential settlements with the likes of football boss Gordon Taylor and PR guru Max Clifford. When that failed, the publisher of the News of the World insisted that phone hacking was the action of a single "rogue reporter" – jailed former royal editor Clive Goodman – and its executives chose to lash out.

Rebekah Brooks – the former editor of the News of the World, the Sun and now chief executive of News International, News Corp's UK arm – blamed this newspaper. When the Guardian reported there were potentially thousands of victims of phone hacking, her message was clear: "The Guardian coverage, we believe, has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public."

Now, after Andy Coulson's departure from David Cameron's side, it is clear both strategies have failed, just as News Corp tries to win approval for his £8bn takeover of BSkyB. With News Corp mired in crisis, Murdoch's arrival is timely – because in the end no decision of significance can be taken without him at the company he has built over half a century.

News Corp officials say they knew nothing of Coulson's announcement, but even with his departure, senior executives in London know it would be naive to hope his resignation will draw a line under the phone hacking affair.

The company well appreciates that the drip-drip of revelation will only continue as lawsuits brought against the newspaper by actor Sienna Miller, football agent Sky Andrew and publicist Nicola Phillips, and many others, develop. Each case moves slowly, an inching forward of witness statements and court hearings that will last months if not years.

Brooks had been trying, behind the scenes, to settle at least some of the civil claims – involved, lawyers say, in proposing six figure payouts. Recently that strategy has been abandoned in favour of allowing claimants to put evidence into the public domain, and if that amounts to material implicating one of its journalists, taking action against staff.

Allegations loom against reporters, questions remain for former editors like Coulson, while Les Hinton, executive chairman for 12 years until 2007, seemed to be confident hacking was not widespread. Hinton told MPs last year: "There was never any evidence delivered to me that suggested that the conduct of Clive Goodman spread beyond him."

Critical evidence is being extracted from the Metropolitan police. The Met is sitting on notebooks, call records and other information seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the News of the World in 2006, as part of the inquiry into phone hacking at Buckingham Palace. Each of the celebrities who sue base their claims on their names, or numbers, appearing in Mulcaire's notes.

It was Miller's case, with a high court filing in December, that triggered the suspension of Ian Edmondson, the News of the World's assistant editor (news). Her lawyers noted that Mulcaire had a habit of writing the first name of the person who instructed him in the top left corner of his notes. On Miller's notes it was Ian. It is an example of the kind of revelations that are likely still to come.

Each time evidence from the Mulcaire files becomes available, it is sent not just to the celebrity litigant, but to News Corp's legal team. If Murdoch wishes to view the files, he can do so. What conclusion he will draw is what will drive how his company reacts to the controversy.