The Real-Life Succession
SHARI REDSTONE FACED A VICIOUS UPHILL BATTLE FOR HER FATHER’S COMPANY— INCLUDING, AT TIMES, WITH SUMNER REDSTONE HIMSELF. FINALLY VICTORIOUS IN UNITING VIACOM AND CBS UNDER HER, SHE TELLS HER SIDE OF THE STORY FOR THE FIRST TIME.
Shari Redstone faced a vicious uphill battle for her father’s company—including, at times, with Sumner Redstone himself. Finally victorious in uniting Viacom and CBS under her, she tells her side of the story for the first time.
As the 96-year-old founder gradually fades from the scene, there’s a new occupant in the chairman’s office: his daughter, Shari, who emerged victorious from arguably the most vicious corporate battle of this century so far—one that occasionally pitted her against her own father.
She’s wasted no time making the place her own, with an overstuffed white couch and matching chairs arrayed around a coffee table with a floral centerpiece. Family is everywhere, the pictures of her children and grandchildren 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 behind her desk. Rather than the confident, 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 challenging 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 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 seemingly daily basis, and it had the kinds of twists and drama that even HBO’s Succession, clearly inspired in part by the Redstones (with a larger dash of Murdochs), couldn’t make up. After years of lobbying, cajoling, legal wrangling and boardroom 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 recalcitrant 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 former chief digital officer for MTV, who later garnered an investment from Redstone’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, repeatedly declined to talk about many of the battle’s granular details, including her dealings with Les Moonves, with whom CBS is currently involved in arbitration. 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 legendarily 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 became Sumner Redstone: he quit his lucrative 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 office and remember that it all began with my father and his vision so many years ago,” Redstone says.
THE SENIOR REDSTONE WAS SO PLEASED, HE REPORTEDLY SAID, “YOUR LIFE IS NOT COMPLETE UNTIL YOU HAVE MET SHARI.”
In contrast to their complicated adult years, her early memories include him taking her to school in the morning, having breakfast together and doing college 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 practicing law full-time. While studying to be a social worker, she found her life changing course as her 13-year marriage to Ira Korff ended in 1993.
“When I got divorced and I . . . needed to get a job, [my father’s] the one who pushed me into National,” Redstone says. “He wanted me to go on the boards when I just got divorced, and I said no, because I was trying to take care of my kids and balance working . . . . This was all my dad’s pushing.”
After she joined National Amusements as vice president of corporate strategy in 1994, she expanded the company globally, opening theaters in Russia and Latin America. She pioneered a concept still in vogue today—introducing gourmet food, lounges and valet parking at theaters in Los Angeles and elsewhere. The senior