Rogers: the heir used the family trust to fire a board and keep control

Rogers Communications, the Canadian telecom founded by the late Ted Rogers, kept family control through the Rogers Control Trust, which held 97 percent of the voting shares and was chaired by the founder's son, Edward Rogers, chairman of the company's board. In September 2021 the structure cracked open: CEO Joe Natale told Edward he had overheard CFO Tony Staffieri discussing replacing him, and insisted that one of the two men had to go. Edward backed Staffieri and offered Natale a resignation package.

On September 24 the board voted 10-1 to accept Natale's resignation and approved Staffieri in principle — though the company later disputed that account. Then Edward's own family turned: his mother Loretta, who had first offered full support for the change, said she reversed course; his sisters Melinda and Martha moved to rescind the decisions and strip the chair's power over management. On October 21 the board voted Edward out as chairman.

Edward answered with the one weapon they could not outvote. As head of the Rogers Control Trust he called a written resolution that replaced five directors, and the reconstituted board reinstated him as chair on October 24. He then asked the British Columbia Supreme Court to confirm the move; on November 5 Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick ruled his actions 'valid and enforceable,' granting him the order and costs — the family drama, she said, was Shakespearean but not relevant to the legal facts.

Staffieri got the top job. In August 2024 the board unanimously named Edward executive chair, formalizing, as lead director Robert Gemmell put it, the role he had already been performing — with the CEO he installed praising his advice and support. The fight had cost the family its privacy; it had not cost the family its company.

Court confirmed the trust-picked board, the family kept its 97%-controlled firm, and Edward became executive chair with his chosen CEO in place.

Whoever controlled the Rogers Control Trust controlled 97 percent of the votes — governance design, not boardroom arithmetic, decided the fight.

Edward moved before a compromise could harden: within five weeks of the CEO-CFO standoff he had a reconstituted board rather than a split one.

He spent the lawsuit early. Without the court order, the written resolution — and his control — would have lived under permanent challenge.

Settling control quickly mattered commercially: the company was working through a major transaction pipeline and could not run with two competing centres of authority.

Family firms live or die on who holds the control vehicle. When the CEO question splits the family, the side that controls the trust — and moves fast — sets the company's future.

The rift stayed public and bitter — Loretta Rogers acknowledged she had first backed, then reversed on, her son's plan, and the dispute played out across Canadian front pages for months. But the outcome held: Staffieri ran the company, the Shaw transaction Edward had been steering was moving through, and in August 2024 the board unanimously made Edward executive chair, formalizing control in the founder's son. For a family-controlled firm, the succession question ended not with harmony but with a court order — and with the family still in charge.