Rogers Family Feud Continues Ahead of Meeting of ‘New Board’
(Bloomberg) -- The family squabble at Rogers Communications Inc. carried into the weekend with Edward Rogers planning to convene a board meeting of who he believes are the new directors the Canadian telecommunications company.
The company and his mother and two sisters, all three of whom sit on the board, have deemed both the meeting and the new directors invalid.
Loretta Rogers, the matriarch of the Rogers family, said in a statement Sunday that the board meeting her son intends to hold is illegitimate. She said the board remains constituted under John MacDonald as chair despite her son’s insistence that it was revamped through a written shareholder proposal Friday.
“Edward unfortunately continues to proceed down a misguided and miscalculated path which leads nowhere productive and puts his own interests ahead of those of Rogers employees, customers and shareholders,” Loretta Rogers said in an emailed statement. “He should stop immediately, as his behavior simply serves to underscore his seemingly wanton disregard for good governance.”
Edward Rogers called a meeting Sunday evening after he claimed to have appointed five new directors through a written shareholder proposal.
Edward’s sister, Martha Rogers, has been on Twitter throughout the weekend trying to discredit her brother’s attempt to take control of the board.
“Like in a bad movie, Ed & his Old Guard literally meet in dark boardrooms,” she said in a tweet Sunday. “All men. All white. All old. They think they are masters of the universe instead of thinking about the impact their instability is causing tens of thousands of people.”
It’s the latest in the family fight that started last month when Edward Rogers tried to replace current Chief Executive Officer Joseph Natale.
Edward remains chair of the family trust that controls 97% of the voting shares in the company. As such, he believes he’s able to replace directors through a shareholder resolution rather than a traditional vote at a shareholder meeting. His mother and sisters disagree. Rogers Communications also said in a statement that it doesn’t believe Edward has the right to reconstitute the board outside of a meeting.
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