Edward Rogers speaks during an unveiling of the new renovations completed to the Rogers Centre in Toronto, on April 6, 2023.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
Edward Rogers is on track to earn more than $5-million in 2025 in his new role of executive chairman of Rogers Communications Inc., financial records show.
Mr. Rogers, previously the chair of the board of directors, was appointed executive chair by the company in August, 2024. The company said it is a title that formalized the work he was already doing in leading the company’s development and long-term growth strategy.
The company set Mr. Rogers’s annual base salary at $3-million, according to the company’s management information circular filed Friday. He received just over $1-million in salary in a partial year’s work in 2024.
This is the first disclosure of Mr. Rogers’s salary as executive chairman.
In September the company granted him an award of 60,000 shares valued at $3.2-million. He received another 60,000 shares on March 3, worth about $2.4-million, records from the System for Electronic Disclosure by Insiders (SEDI) show. Rogers confirms that this is an annual award.
His 2025 total compensation will also include an estimate of the increase in the value of his pension. If his annual salary remains consistent, this means that Mr. Rogers could earn at least $5.4-million in 2025. His total compensation in 2024 was just under $4.5-million.
Mr. Rogers owns about $90-million worth of the company’s shares in total. This does not include his portion of the holdings of the Rogers Control Trust, through which the family maintains voting control of the company, and which is currently worth over $5.8-billion.
Last year, Mr. Rogers was instrumental in the company’s $4.7-billion acquisition of BCE Inc.’s 37.5-per-cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment.
Rogers president and chief executive officer Tony Staffieri was paid total compensation of about $14.1-million in 2024. This included a salary of just under $1.5-million, a nearly $1.5-million annual bonus, and $10-million of stock awards. He also received 100 per cent of his performance-based compensation, in the form of long- and short-term incentive plans totalling $11.5-million. In 2023, Mr. Staffieri made just under $13-million.
The company also paid $22-million in 2024 to Bradley Shaw, former CEO of Shaw, as part of an agreement struck with him during the companies’ merger in 2023. Since the closing of the $20-billion deal, Rogers has paid Mr. Shaw $39.5-million.
Rogers dropped 2,000 jobs in 2024, the company’s annual report showed, at a time when Canada’s largest telecoms are slimming down amid an overall industry slowdown.
Rogers’s stock price fell by 36 per cent in 2024 amid an industry slump, increased competition and falling immigration.
When combined with dividend payouts, Rogers’s total shareholder return that year represented a 26-per-cent loss – slightly better than BCE Inc., with a 30-per-cent loss, but worse than Telus, with an 11.5 per cent loss.