A public feud has recently erupted between members of the Rogers family over the composition of the board of directors and who should be CEO of Canada’s largest wireless provider. While these spats normally happen in dark boardrooms, out of public sight, this case is blowing up in the public eye, with the family turning on each other on Twitter. This drama is taking place with the backdrop of a proposed $26-billion dollar takeover of Shaw, Canada’s fourth largest wireless provider. The merger is still being reviewed by the Competition Bureau, but is expected to be approved next year—though the latest drama is calling that into question. Caught in between the disgusting infighting of these oligarchs is the plight of telecom workers and consumers, who face unreliable service while paying some of the highest wireless rates in the world. We say, put these parasites out of the misery of their infighting and end this farce by expropriating Rogers under democratic workers’ control!
The tangled web
The Rogers family is one of Canada’s richest clans, with a net worth of $12 billion. In addition to their telecommunications and media empire, the Rogers family owns the Toronto Blue Jays, Canada’s only Major League Baseball team.
When Ted Rogers died in 2008, he appointed a complex inheritance structure that left his son, Edward Rogers III, as the chair of the family trust, which controls 97.5 per cent of voting shares in the company. There is a separate board of independent directors, but the family trust decides the composition of that board.
Six of the 10 members of the family trust are members of the Rogers family. They are the matriarch, Loretta Rogers; the children, Edward, Melinda, Martha, and Lisa; and Loretta’s nephew, David Robinson.
The remaining four members include Toronto Mayor John Tory, who, it was revealed, made $700,000 from Rogers while mayor. A member of the Rogers family herself, Martha Rogers, in an astonishing sign of further splits and divisions, publicly lambasted the mayor for claiming that he only spent his spare time working for her own company:
“Tory says work to mediate Rogers dispute occurs in his ‘spare time’ − Actually no, that’s not the truth, John,” Martha Rogers wrote on Twitter. “We were there 9-10 hours, outside of you leaving for 45 mins to do a press conference. Unless the Mayor has Thursdays off…? #EdRogersSaga.”
The incumbent board of independent directors includes the CEO of Cineplex, the former CEO of Hudson’s Bay, and former Ontario premier David Peterson. The Rogers family drama is bringing into the public eye the normally hidden web both between capitalists and between capitalists and politicians. This is just one corner of a dysfunctional clan that extends far beyond the Rogers family.
The ‘butt dial’
The saga came to light after current Rogers CEO Joe Natale found out about plans to remove and replace him as CEO with former CFO Tony Staffieri, the pick of Edward Rogers. Natale apparently found out about the plot to replace him when Staffieri accidentally butt-dialed Natale while discussing the plans to remove him from his position!
After overhearing the conversation about his removal, Natale brought the matter to the board of directors. According to reports, the family originally agreed to remove Natale, with a compensation package worth $200 million (essentially hush money); however, they changed their minds days later, asking Natale to stay on after all.
At the board meeting that originally removed Natale, Loretta Rogers, the matriarch whose family’s money provided the seed funds to launch the empire, read a script justifying the removal of Natale as CEO. She later backtracked, however, saying the script she read was written by her son, Edward, and that she was misled by him! When the attempt to replace Natale appeared to have failed, the CFO, Staffieri, was apparently in turn fired.
In a further dizzying series of events, the independent board first removed Edward Rogers from his position as chair due to his attempt to remove the CEO. In response, Edward appointed his own board of directors, who in turn reappointed Edward as chair.
The rest of the Rogers family and most of the incumbent board are rejecting Edward’s hand-picked board. For his part, Natale is saying that he and his 11-person executive team will leave the company if Edward’s plan to reconstitute the board is successful.
‘Perpetual tantrums’
On Twitter, Edward’s sister, Martha, has been lambasting him, saying she will “spend every penny” fighting her brother, adding, “Know I won’t bring anything up without full receipts, I got them from the last 20+ years — who’s vulnerable now?”
Martha further publicly took aim at her brother for appointing his own board of directors (which Edward claims he has the right to do as chair of the trust board):
“I see Ed has appointed himself the Chairman. LOL,” Edward’s sister, Martha Rogers, tweeted on Oct. 24. “This should be taken as seriously as if he appointed himself the King of England.”
Martha continued, accusing Edward Rogers of “perpetual tantrums when he doesn’t get his way.” She even compared the unfolding situation with her family to Game of Thrones.
This is how the rich see their role in this drama: as warring monarchs, presiding over a vast empire to which they have a divine right, all while the people suffer as their pawns caught in between.
In light of the Rogers family drama, stocks of Rogers and Shaw have both taken a nosedive. Rogers’ and Shaw’s combined 12 million consumers are left wondering how much their phone bills will go up by, while the 85,000 workers at Rogers and Shaw are left wondering if they will have a job when all is said and done—all to pay for the riches that the telecom oligarchs are squabbling over.
In a further example of waste, the case of who has the power to appoint the Rogers board of directors is currently being heard in the BC Supreme Court, tying up public resources to resolve petty squabbles between millionaires. The case, of course, got pushed to the front of the docket. Working class people, on the other hand, need to wait months or years to get our day in court.
End the petty squabbles by nationalizing the telecom sector!
The current drama is not a matter of one or two “bad apples,” but a symptom of the degeneracy of the system as a whole. The only difference is the machinations that normally occur behind closed doors are out in the public eye in this case.
While the oligarchs fight, they are gorging themselves off of the Canadian public. Recently, Rogers reported a profit of $490 million.Yet, during the pandemic, they took $82.3 million in public money through the government’s wage subsidy program, all while paying out $1 billion in dividends to shareholders and laying off workers!
These petty squabbles are just the latest proof that these clowns are not fit to run a lemonade stand, let alone Canada’s largest wireless provider. This situation arises from the irrationality of production for profit, which gives wealth to bureaucratic dolts. Why should these millionaire buffoons control the lives of tens of thousands of workers and millions of consumers in an essential service? They don’t deserve to play these games with workers’ livelihoods and an essential means of communication. By nationalizing the telecommunications industry, we would be able to provide cheap and reliable phone, internet, and television service to Canadians, rather than feeding the greedy infighting millionaires who play Game of Thrones with their monopoly grip on the industry.
