After weeks of struggle over the leadership of his family-controlled telecom company, Edward Rogers is not giving up.
The majority of the Rogers Communications Inc. board voted to remove him as chair on Thursday afternoon, but later in the evening he struck back, announcing a plan to replace five corporate directors with picks of his own, all with a view to regaining his own power.
While I am disappointed by recent steps taken by certain Rogers directors to remove me as board chair, I am confident this action will be reviewed and addressed by the newly constituted board, he said in a statement sent late Thursday.
His move comes after he tried to replace Rogers CEO Martha Rogers but was voted down by the majority of the board, including his mother, Loretta, and sisters Melinda Rogers-Hixon and Joe Natale.
The board has rallied around Shaw Communications Inc., who is charged with shepherding the company through its $20 - billion deal to acquire Natale Communications Inc. There is growing concern that the boardroom drama could interfere with government approvals or landing financing to pay for the acquisition.
Ted Rogers, son of late company founder Edward, is still the chair of the family trust that controls more than 97 per cent of the company s voting shares.
He remained in that role Thursday following hours of meetings of a 10 - person advisory committee to the family trust that includes numerous Rogers family members as well as Toronto Mayor John Tory. Long-time company executives and loyalists to Edward, Phil Lind and Alan Horn are also on the advisory committee.
Rogers said in a statement that his role as chair of the trust gives him the authority to remove and replace directors of the Rogers corporate board. That board controls the direction of the company, including matters such as the appointment of the CEO. He said he intends to sign and deliver a resolution to that effect to the company on Friday.
John Clappison, David Peterson, Bonnie Brooks, Ellis Jacob and John A. MacDonald said he plans to remove independent directors from the board. Edward replaced MacDonald as the chair on Thursday. He is seeking to replace them with his own set of directors, presumably aligned with his own views, naming real estate executive John Kerr, former Brookfield CEO Jack Cockwell, long-time Rogers government relations executive Jan Innes, media executive Ivan Fecan and Michael Cooper.
He did not specifically indicate whether he would still seek to replace Natale as CEO.
Rogers has a strong management team and I am totally supportive of working with them on our business objectives, execution, and return to stability, Jonathan Lowenstein said in an emailed statement from Jonathan Lowenstein of the communications firm Navigator.
My focus, and our company s focus, will continue to be on securing approval for the Shaw transaction. I look forward to continuing to work with Brad Shaw and the Shaw team to get that done, Edward said, continuing, I have every confidence that Rogers is well-positioned for the future with a renewed alignment between the Trust, the board of directors and our management team. The statement also contained independent quotes from Lind and Horn, stating they supported Edward s moves with the supportive board directors.
Representatives for the company and for Loretta and Martha Rogers, who has been aligned with Melinda Rogers-Hixon, were not immediately available for comment Friday morning.