Page 56 - Forbes - Asia (December 2019 - January 2020)

THE REAL LIFE
‘SUCCESSION’
Shari Redstone faced an uphill battle for her father’s company,
and tells her side of the story for the first time.
BY DAWN CHMIELEWSKI
or nearly two decades, Sum-
ner Redstone lorded over the
media juggernaut he created
from the corner of the 52nd
Ffloor of Viacom’s headquar-
ters, a classic power perch down to the
tan leather sofas.
As the 96-year-old founder gradually
fades from the scene, there’s a new occu-
pant in the chairman’s office: his daugh-
ter, Shari, who emerged victorious from
arguably the most vicious corporate bat-
tle of this century so far—one that occa-
sionally pitted her against her own father.
She’s wasted no time making the
place her own, with an overstuffed
white couch and matching chairs ar-
rayed around a coffee table with a flo-
ral centerpiece. Family is everywhere,
the pictures of her children and grand-
children covering every flat surface.
Shari herself poses with the six Super
Bowl trophies claimed by her beloved
New England Patriots. And Sumner is
represented, too, his portrait sitting be-
hind her desk. Rather than the confi-
dent, austere, imposing image that most
founders favor, this one depicts him
closer to how he looks now: frail, bent
over, shrunken with age, dressed in the
jersey of their shared team, the Patriots.
“No matter how hard or challeng-
ing it got, I tried to keep my head down,
fight for what was right and not read
the press,” Redstone says during one of
a series of interviews with Forbes, the
54 | FORBES ASIA DECEMBER 2019 / JANUARY 2020
first she’s given since she won the fight
for the future of CBS and Viacom that
started four years ago. “For me, it was
really important to ignore the noise and
to keep looking forward.”
That required some steely discipline.
The battle royale played out on a seem-
ingly daily basis, and it had the kinds of
twists and drama that even HBO’s Succes-
sion, clearly inspired in part by the Red-
stones (with a larger dash of Murdochs),
couldn’t make up. After years of lobby-
ing, cajoling, legal wrangling and board-
room maneuvering, the petite, 65-year-
old Shari Redstone officially emerged in
August as the chairman of the soon-to-be
combined entity, having remade the recal-
citrant boards of both Viacom and CBS.
“There were a lot of men around her,
very powerful men, either telling her
she wasn’t going to win or who were
her foes,” says Jason Hirschhorn, a for-
mer chief digital officer for MTV, who
later garnered an investment from Red-
stone’s venture firm. “They thought she
was the rich guy’s daughter who didn’t
know anything. And that, as much as
anything else, is why she’s won.”
Redstone, a lawyer by training, re-
peatedly declined to talk about many of
the battle’s granular details, including
her dealings with Les Moonves, with
whom CBS is currently involved in ar-
bitration. Her vantage point, as with her
office, reverts to family—in this case,
one with a $4.1 billion fortune and a
roller-coaster relationship with her leg-
endarily headstrong father at the center.
That saga now has a surprising
new chapter, including a strong claim
to Redstone being the most powerful
woman in media.
Shari Redstone was born in 1954, the
same year that Sumner Redstone be-
came Sumner Redstone: he quit his lu-
crative career as an antitrust lawyer to
join the family’s 14-theater drive-in
chain, National Amusements. “There
isn’t a day that I don’t walk into that of-
fice and remember that it all began with
my father and his vision so many years
ago,” Redstone says.
In contrast to their complicated adult
years, her early memories include him
taking her to school in the morning,
having breakfast together and doing col-
lege tours. She recalls one rainy morning
while slogging it out through law school,
as her dad did, when he ran out at 3 a.m.
in search of a copy shop for one of her
school papers.
She inherited her father’s auburn
hair and sharp intellect. After the birth
of her third child, she stopped prac-
ticing law full-time. While studying to
be a social worker, she found her life
changing course as her 13-year mar-
riage to Ira Korff ended in 1993. JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES
“When I got divorced and I. . . need-
ed to get a job, [my father is] the one
who pushed me into National,” Redstone