One Sad Corporate Titan

Quote of the day:
“One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter: ‘Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.’”
--John Steinbeck

A spat between Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone and his daughter Shari has been at the top of the business news the last few days. On the surface, the disagreement is about Shari’s interest in and control over the company when her father dies. Viacom owns Paramount Pictures, Showtime, Comedy Central and other cable channels.

The reality is that this is a classic, almost stereotypical saga of one man’s enormous greed and ego running amok and running over everything in its path.

Mr. Redstone has made it clear that he will have a stranglehold on control of the company until he takes his last breath. If he was a happy guy there’d be nothing wrong with this.

He has been referred to in the Los Angeles Times as a “control freak.” Unless that term is taken literally, it is too facilely dismissive of this situation. It’s as if we want to classify how he operates as just a little eccentric.

The reality is that he is obnoxious and impossible to be around.

He is obsessed with his company’s stock price which, tellingly, has languished for quite some time. He tried to give it a boost by spinning off money-losing CBS. Get this: after the spinoff, Viacom’s stock continued to stagnate but CBS took off. Doesn’t that tell us something?

He cannot bear that someone else at Viacom might get some control over decision making, or might be seen as having a positive influence on the company. For Sumner Redstone, there is never enough control.

A few years ago he fired the executive widely considered the best in the broadcasting business, Mel Karmazin. Karmazin had done an extraordinary job building the Infinity stations and then CBS. When Viacom bought CBS, he became president of the combined company and there was great anticipation that he would work his magic to seriously build it.

He lasted just about a year. Redstone couldn’t stand having someone around who was talented, who knew what he was doing and was independent.

Not only is Redstone not a happy guy, he seems determined to alienate every key person who works for him and every member of his family. The only member of his family who does not have an argument with or lawsuit pending against him is his wife.

And so he sits in one of his very expensive homes, watching his exotic tropical fish and the stock ticker on CNBC.