Edward Rogers in his role as chairman of the Toronto Blue Jays in 2025.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Edward Rogers, executive chairman of the telecom giant Rogers Communications Inc. RCI-B-T, has triggered a clash over his mother’s multimillion-dollar estate with an attempt to deny payments to his partner in pro sports, Larry Tanenbaum.
Mr. Rogers has objected to the $11-million in total compensation that Mr. Tanenbaum and the estate’s two other trustees are claiming as executors of the $250-million estate of his mother, Loretta Anne Rogers.
Mr. Rogers has also objected to any payment to Mr. Tanenbaum, saying it appeared he had “delegated” his duties to his co-trustees.
Mr. Tanenbaum’s company, Kilmer Sports Inc., owns a 25-per-cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which Rogers Communications has the right to acquire in July, a move that would give it full ownership of the sports company.
Mr. Rogers’s objection to Mr. Tanenbaum’s compensation is the latest sign of friction between the two businessmen, who have a history of disagreement over some aspects of their jointly held and managed sports empire.
The sparring over the management of Ms. Rogers’s estate also follows a feud within the family several years ago, as she and two of her daughters found themselves opposing Mr. Rogers both in the boardroom and the courtroom over the leadership of the telecom company that bears their name.
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Mr. Rogers laid out his objection to the compensation in legal filings earlier this month, in response to a detailed account of the trustees’ yet-unfinished administration of Ms. Rogers’s sprawling estate between her death in 2022 and the end of 2024. The estate encompassed numerous real estate holdings, a wide range of other physical assets and significant financial holdings.
Lawyers for the three trustees and for Mr. Rogers did not reply to a request for comment, while representatives for Mr. Rogers and for Mr. Tanenbaum from Rogers Communications and Kilmer Sports, respectively, declined to comment.
The trustees’ report outlines their calculations of compensation, as well as the remaining assets to distribute among beneficiaries, including Mr. Rogers and his three sisters.
Ms. Rogers, the family matriarch, was the longest-serving director of the Toronto-based telecom and media conglomerate that she co-founded alongside her late husband, Ted, who died in 2008.
Her will, included in the filings, authorized her trustees to take anticipated compensation at “reasonable intervals,” and allowed them to charge professional fees and an hourly rate for services rendered.
Ms. Rogers’s other two trustees are Mary Filippelli, who spent two decades as partner at KPMG LLP and later served as a partner at Deloitte LLP, according to LinkedIn, and Jim Reid, the former chief human resources officer for Rogers Communications. Both have served on the advisory council of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Larry Tanenbaum’s company owns a 25-per-cent stake in MLSE, which Rogers has the right to acquire in July.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
The trustees’ compensation includes two components. For the first, the trustees applied a fee of 2.5 per cent of all funds entering or exiting the estate, resulting in fees of about $10-million. In Ontario, this rate is often considered a standard guideline. While Ontario’s Trustee Act does not prescribe a set fee scale, it says that compensation must be “fair and reasonable.”
In the objection, lawyers for Mr. Rogers said the trustees’ claim is “neither fair nor reasonable.” In “circumstances where the magnitude of the estate is very large,” the objection alleges, the 2.5-per-cent guideline resulted in “grossly excessive compensation” and the fee should be significantly reduced.
Mr. Rogers also objected to the second component of the compensation: care and management fees for maintaining the estate’s value, which the trustees said had amounted to $1.1-million.
His objection also alleges the trustees were wrong to use $14.5-million of the estate’s funds to purchase executor liability insurance coverage, given that any risk was “wholly offset by explicit indemnities and strong limitations of liability” included in Ms. Rogers’s will. This is despite the fact that the will authorized them to purchase the insurance using her funds if they deemed it appropriate.
A table provided by the trustees as part of the executors’ report states they collectively spent about 2,650 hours administrating the estate from 2022 to 2024. Mr. Rogers’s objection calls this amount “excessive,” particularly in light of what filings called the “slow pace” of the disbursements, he alleged.
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In the filings, Mr. Rogers specifically objects to Mr. Tanenbaum receiving “any compensation,” “as he appears to have delegated the administration to his co-estate trustees.”
According to filings, Ms. Filippelli’s time accounted for 66 per cent of the total hours spent managing the estate, while Mr. Reid contributed 29 per cent and Mr. Tanenbaum contributed about 5 per cent. Lawyers did not respond to a question about how the total compensation will be divided between the three trustees.
Mr. Rogers also alleged he had identified millions of dollars’ worth of capital disbursements, such as for home security and yachts, that were missing certain supporting documentation, and he objected to a number of payments made to law and consulting firms.
The estate report shows more than $2-million has been paid to Aird and Berlis LLP, the firm representing the trustees, as well as $565,000 to Baytree Advisors Inc., for which the CPA Ontario website lists Ms. Filippelli as an employee. The report does not outline the purpose of these payments.
Mr. Tanenbaum and Mr. Rogers have at times disagreed over the management of their joint sports empire.
Their companies have also sparred over their sports holdings. In 2023, Rogers and Bell, which at the time held equal stakes in MLSE, challenged Mr. Tanenbaum’s plan to sell a portion of Kilmer Sports, in which he holds his MLSE stake, to the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension plan.
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The sale of that stake to OMERS put a higher price on Mr. Tanenbaum’s portion than the telecoms anticipated, The Globe and Mail has reported.
As of March, significant work remains to be done to settle Ms. Rogers’s estate. As of the end of 2024, the estate was worth about $120-million, including about $20-million in original unrealized assets such as real estate and personal property, and about $100-million in investments, receivables and cash on hand.
Ms. Rogers’s assets are divided into numerous buckets, including both Canadian and American-dollar denomination primary and secondary estates and various other trusts. Of those assets, as of June, 2022, she held more than $50-million in real estate properties in Toronto, Muskoka and the Bahamas, dozens of vehicles including cars and boats, personal and household items worth $5-million, and artwork and jewellery worth $1.6-million.
The trustees’ report shows they disbursed funeral expenses of more than $360,000, as well as legacy payments to more than a dozen individuals each worth between $15,000 and $500,000.
Ms. Rogers had given a $200,000 personal loan to “Children’s Books,” and also left money for The Canadian Lyford Cay Foundation, eating disorder support charity Sheena’s Place, The Bishop Strachan School Foundation and the University Health Network Foundation, the documents show.
In her will, Ms. Rogers stipulated that the residue – the remainder after all taxes and other obligations – of the primary estate was to be divided equally among all four of her children. However, only Ms. Rogers’s three daughters, Lisa, Melinda and Martha, are beneficiaries for her registered funds, including her retirement funds, pension plans and annuities.
It’s unclear who is named as a beneficiary in the other portions of the estate, which contain the majority of the assets.
The year before she died, the Rogers family became divided when Mr. Rogers tried to fire the company’s then-chief executive officer, Joe Natale, and replace him with chief financial officer Tony Staffieri. Ms. Rogers backed her daughters Melinda and Martha, as well as a majority of the company’s independent directors, who opposed the move. The conflict eventually landed in a B.C. courtroom, which handed Mr. Rogers a victory, allowing him to appoint Mr. Staffieri as CEO.
At the time of Ms. Rogers’s death, Mr. Rogers owed his mother almost $30-million in personal loans for two properties known as “Timoca House” and “Yellow House.” It’s unclear how much he still owes on these loans.
In her will, Ms. Rogers included a provision stating that the trustees would be protected from losses or liability that arose from any legal proceedings commenced against them, specifically referencing those proceedings “by or for the benefit of Edward Rogers.”
She also noted that any beneficiary who took steps to challenge the validity of any provision of the will, other than for its proper interpretation, would be deemed to have predeceased her and would therefore waive their entitlement to her primary assets.
With reports from Alexandra Posadzki and Andrew Willis