Rogers Estate Fee Dispute Sparks Sports Empire Clash
(Bloomberg) — The billionaire owners of one of North America’s biggest sports empires are locked in a feud over the $3,000-an-hour bill one handed the other for administering his deceased mother’s estate.
In a court filing this month in Toronto, telecommunications scion Edward Rogers objected to the nearly $8 million fee claimed by the three trustees of his mother’s estate. One of them is Larry Tanenbaum, Rogers’ partner in the holding company that owns the National Basketball Association’s Toronto Raptors and the National Hockey League’s Toronto Maple Leafs.
The trustees claim they’ve spent 2,652.5 hours administering the C$250 million ($181 million) estate since Loretta Anne Rogers died in 2022. Edward Rogers says that estimate is “exorbitant” given much of the day-to-day management was overseen by employees of the Rogers family office, and the three trustees hired professionals to help them, according to the filing. He also takes issue with the rate of compensation these hours and the total fee imply.
“Compensation at these rates is far in excess of what the applicants could reasonably expect to earn from full-time employment, and far in excess of what the Estate would reasonably be charged by a professional or institutional estate executor,” Rogers says. “The effective hourly rate at which the applicants seek to be compensated is excessive and unreasonable.”
The filing, which was first reported by the Globe and Mail, singles out Tanenbaum as particularly undeserving of compensation. He logged 125 hours in the time sheets submitted by the executors, versus more than 2,500 total for the other two trustees.
“He appears to have delegated the administration to his co-estate trustees,” Rogers says.
The trustees’ lawyer declined to comment. Edward Rogers’ lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment. Lawyers representing Edward Rogers’ three sisters, who are also beneficiaries of their mother’s estate, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Though the amounts at issue are small compared to both men’s wealth, the dispute adds a personal twist to a big-money business deal in the works which could change the landscape of professional sports in Canada.
Rogers Communications Inc., which the Rogers family still controls, plans to purchase the 25% stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment it doesn’t already own from Tanenbaum’s Kilmer Group before the end of the year, giving it full control of two of Canada’s most valuable sports franchises.
A spokesperson for Rogers Communications said the dispute over the estate fees isn’t a company matter, and there is no change in plans for the acquisition of the remaining stake in MLSE. A spokesperson for Tanenbaum’s company, Kilmer Group, declined to comment.
Analysts at Toronto-Dominion Bank expect the deal to cost about C$4 billion and result in the creation of a C$25 billion sports behemoth after Rogers combines those assets with Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays and the sports-focused media properties it already owns.