It makes you a bit sad. What the genius of Ted Rogers built is being mishandled by his son. From the catbird seat on Toronto’s ancient Jarvis Street, you can see the past and future of the city, from the winding streets of once-exclusive Rosedale, to the modern towers at Yonge and Bloor. It is a view of the rise and fall of the Ted Rogers’ vision.
And yet it is strange that a man of Ted’s vision failed to see the weakness of the corporate governance he left his son. The rules must be very clear in British Columbia where his company was incorporated. The judge’s ruling was clear. The Rogers scion had carte blanche. He had carte blanche to fail. And the rest of the telecom industry will ultimately feast on the carrion.
But what amuses me in all of this carry-on, newspaper revelations and speculation, is that young Mr. Rogers is trying to take the company back to its past. Dumping the company president is not the concern. He has the right to do that. It is dumping the more progressive outside directors and replacing them with what seem to be tried and true yes-men that I do not understand.
I think the key question to Mr. Rogers should have been asked by the B.C. judge. The question is very simple. And I think it is critical. It is what do you think is the purpose of a board of directors?
And before you answer that question, you have to bear in mind that Ted Rogers was entrepreneurial and used his board to reach out into the community. They were not only good sounding boards but they were influencers. For example, most of the board were probably conservative but having lawyer and former premier David Peterson as a board member was not for his legal mind but his direct pipelines into the liberal party in Ontario and Ottawa.
The fact that young Rogers has already given Peterson his walking papers shows that his training at Comcast in the U.S. was not what he needed to come back and take over his father’s company. While there might be four different studies ongoing now by the Canadian government, it will ultimately be a political decision as to whether Rogers will absorb Calgary-based Shaw in a $26 billion deal to become the largest telecom in Canada.
I think the boardroom term for this situation is that young Mr. Rogers has screwed the pooch!
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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