The bitter power struggle is now headed to court. It was just after 3am on a Sunday, and Martha Rogers couldn't sleep. She took to Twitter to agonise about the fate of her father's eponymous telecoms firm, Rogers, a giant in Canada's corporate landscape and the centrepiece of their family's multi-billion dollar dynasty.
The family name is a staple of the Toronto skyline and is emblazoned across one of Canada's largest stadiums. But Rogers has struggled since the death of its founder in , and now its future has been thrown into question by an epic family feud. Ms Rogers, her sister and mother have split from her older brother Edward after he attempted to oust the company's chief executive and other members of its independent board in September, launching an unusually public row in Canada's business world.
Already, shares of Rogers have slumped as the family drama plays out. The fallout could affect everything from professional sports to local politics. The plot at the moment is straight out of HBO. The drama launched last month when Edward, 52, sought to replace Rogers chief executive Joe Natale, blaming him for the firm's underperformance.
But matriarch Loretta Rogers, 82, and her daughters closed rank, backing Mr Natale and later voting to remove Edward as chairman of the Rogers board. In turn, Mr Rogers filed suit in British Columbia, seeking legal approval to reconstitute the company's board and restore his position of chair - without consulting shareholders. Through a representative, Mr Rogers declined an interview request, but said in a statement that "decisive action was needed to return the company to stability" and close a pending merger with competitor Shaw Communications.
In court documents, Mr Rogers said he had grown "increasingly concerned" with Mr Natale's performance. Rogers has been beset by sluggish growth in wireless revenue, stagnant share prices and, most recently, a loss of roaming revenue due to Covid travel curbs. Mr Natale, 57, did not respond to a request for comment. Not good enough, apparently, according to Edward. But in a bizarre twist, the covert plan was exposed when Mr Staffieri accidentally pocket-dialled Mr Natale while discussing it with someone else, an incident first reported by the Globe and Mail newspaper.
After learning of the scheme, Mr Natale informed an independent director, prompting an emergency board meeting, where the majority of the group - including Mrs Rogers and her daughters - backed him. Mr Rogers alleged in court documents that the Rogers board had initially agreed to replace Mr Natale, and that the CEO had begun preparing for retirement.
Two days later, they reversed course. But his family has presented a very different version of events, saying he had misled them about Mr Natale's performance. The board stripped Mr Rogers of his chairman title. His mother and two sisters all cast votes against him.
Mr Rogers then called his own meeting of what he deemed a newly-constituted board of Rogers to reinstall him.
Mrs Rogers called the actions "invalid", saying in a statement that her son was proceeding down a "misguided and miscalculated path". His sister, Martha, wrote on Twitter that his appointment "should be taken as seriously as if he appointed himself the King of England. The elder Rogers ran the company until his death in , having overseen its expansion from a small cable TV firm into one of the country's most powerful corporations. Beyond the core telecoms firm, Rogers today owns a variety of businesses.
But the firm has sometimes stumbled since its founder's death. Mr Rogers' death left a vacuum, he said, and it has been filled, in part, by "intense" sibling rivalry with Edward, Ted Rogers' only son, often at the centre. When his father died, Edward became chair of the Rogers Control Trust - a family-run entity which controls the majority of Rogers Communications shares.
In this seat, Mr Rogers has broad authority to vote the family's shares in the public company: His father once compared the position's power to that of the president of the United States - and, according to Prof Leblanc, it is a highly unusual arrangement. In January , the Rogers board voted to appoint Mr Rogers as chair, further consolidating his authority. He has frequently come up against the company's CEOs, who have seen abrupt ends to their tenure after falling out of favour.
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