Family feuds, sibling rivalry: What this cult TV series tells us about family businesses
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Family feuds, sibling rivalry: What this cult Television series tells usa well-nigh family unit businesses
Flavour iii of the Emmy-winning HBO show Succession revolves around the coma-stricken, billionaire patriarch of a family unit business and his children, who compete to inherit his assets. Just art imitates life: The plot has parallels to real-life magnates and their squabbling breed.
Family businesses accept strange dynamics, specially around the selection of an heir. (Photograph: HBO)
In the forthcoming third series of Succession, a grapheme said, "I thought my family was f**ked upwardly. This is next level." That's an understatement: Succession seems to be the penthouse of dramas, far higher up ordinary means and commotion.
Yet the Emmy-winning HBO show does not imagine what could become wrong in family empires; it plasters together what has gone wrong in case afterward case in real life, and applies a glorious gloss of wordplay and satire. In Succession, history really does repeat itself, the second time as farce and much more than enjoyable.
The show centres on the Roys, a plutocratic media family unit grappling with two biological facts: The patriarch will die, and none of his children is his clone. (This commodity contains spoilers for seasons one and ii.)
In the very first episode, billionaire Logan Roy has a stroke – earlier naming a successor. He joins a very large gild. Medieval kings were desperate to produce an heir; their modern equivalents are inclined to forget their bloodshed. Indian magnates Anil and Mukesh Ambani feuded after their father Dhirubhai died following a stroke, without leaving a volition.
Logan's trouble is more complicated. As he lies in a blackout, nosotros discover his company has billions in hidden debt. Now nosotros are in the annals of Robert Maxwell, whose media group was revealed by the FT, the 24-hour interval later his death in 1991, to owe hundreds of millions of pounds more than stated. Maxwell's sons Kevin and Ian constitute that their first inheritances from their father were a financial crisis and a fraud trial.
Unlike Maxwell, Succession's Logan survives. He retakes the reins of his empire, despite being so unwell that he confuses his son'southward part carpeting for a urinal. It is enough to rival Sumner Redstone, who tried to remain chairman of his media conglomerates, CBS and Viacom, when he could no longer speak. Redstone communicated via an iPad loaded with audio clips of himself saying "yep", "no" and "f*** you".
"I have no intention of e'er retiring, or of dying," he had said, at the historic period of 85. He died final year, aged 97, 2 years subsequently a court had alleged him incapacitated.
Just Succession never pulls too difficult on i thread; there is ever more to the moving-picture show. Presently before his stroke, Logan tries to blindside his children into weakening their control of the family trust, telling them on his 80th birthday that it's the one present he actually wants.
Welcome to the life and times of Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, who warned her children that they would go bankrupt unless they agreed, inside three days, to extend her control of a family trust. A guess found her legal tactics against her children had "closely approach[ed] intimidation".
"They don't capeesh… the efforts I went to," Rinehart shot back, soon afterwards.
In Succession, Logan ends up facing a boardroom coup, led by his son Kendall. That scene will non have surprised the Shin family, head of South Korean conglomerate Lotte Grouping, where the younger son convened a board meeting and removed his father.
Kendall fails in his coup, so teams upward with a hedge fund and a rival media group to mountain a hostile takeover. The set up-upwards recalls the case of George Strawbridge, grandson of the founder of Campbell's Soup, who allied with activist hedge fund investor Dan Loeb to oust the unabridged lath.
However, Kendall is troubled by habit bug, which recall the struggles of Australian scion James Packer. He drives a car off the road into a lake, and his young companion drowns, an incident that strongly resembles Senator Ted Kennedy's crash on Chappaquiddick Isle.
Succession'due south characters are constantly questioning what is real – "Is this real?"; "Are yous for real?"; "No real person involved". The joke is that none of it is real, and yet all of information technology is.
The family that Succession draws well-nigh from is the Murdochs. Years ago the bear witness'due south creator, Jesse Armstrong, wrote a script (never produced) about Rupert Murdoch's 78th birthday political party.
These days he and the testify'due south stars sometimes play down the link, and not just because Murdoch knows expert libel lawyers. They cite other influences for Succession: King Lear; Roman tragedies; Ivan the Terrible, who murdered his developed son; and Andre Agassi, whose father devised a machine that would force him to hit virtually 1m tennis assurance a year. The endless ingredients generate the richness, similar a sort of Oedipal Ottolenghi recipe.
But the dominant flavour is however Murdoch: a rightwing media magnate who allows three of his children to compete with each other for position; who fights off a corporate debt crisis; who indulges an extremist Television receiver host; who denies all cognition of criminal behaviour in his empire; who tries, with mixed success, to purchase bays media assets; and who hires a therapist to try to reconcile his family in what may be a publicity stunt.
It's all in the Murdoch family history and it'due south all in Succession. "I read everything ever written on the Murdochs," Jeremy Potent, the actor who plays Kendall, has said. "I read that James Murdoch ties his shoelaces very tightly. That was interesting."
In broad brush, Kendall is James Murdoch, the kid who feels he has earned the top job by slaving away in the empire merely who is passed over. His sister Shiv Roy is Elisabeth Murdoch – the liberal who keeps her distance but would dear to have over. Roman is Lachlan Murdoch – the maverick. (Lachlan now runs much of what remains of the Murdoch empire afterwards the family unit sold out lucratively to Disney.)
The Roy children are not only competing for their male parent'due south job; they are competing for his affection, which he offers merely oft enough to keep them interested. "For a media guy, he's non the greatest communicator," Kendall noted drily.
The fact that Succession is recognisable from reality makes it more compelling (see also: The Crown, The W Wing). But how recognisable is it for people who don't travel on superyachts, who don't spend The states$fifteen,000 (S$20,200) on a birthday nowadays or eat endangered songbirds for dinner, and who really need to article of clothing overcoats because they may non be chauffeured at every turn? How universal are its depictions of sibling rivalry, the desire for parental approval and dilemmas about family obedience?
More than universal than it might seem. In his book The Brazenness of Hope, Barack Obama seeks to explain the "chronic restlessness" that drove him into politics. "Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his begetter's expectations or brand up for their father's mistakes," he wrote. Obama went from hero-worshipping his father to being shocked by his failings. Unlike Succession's Logan, Obama Sr was not visible on every Idiot box screen and every paper, but he yet shaped his son's outlook.
Logan doesn't push button his kids to flatter him, like Donald Trump did when he interviewed Donald Jr and Ivanka on camera. But he has fixed expectations: He wants his children to be similar him. That is incommunicable, not least because his wealth means that they didn't have his impoverished childhood.
Some psychotherapists utilise the term "reproductive narcissism" to describe parents' tendency to favour children who resemble them. Logan forces his children to choose betwixt two versions of themselves, one that is defined by his achievements and ane that isn't. His own narcissism comes to the fore at the stop of serial two, when Kendall betrays him again. Logan smiles, because finally his son is acting equally ruthlessly as he would.
A school of economics posits that sibling competition is widespread and rational, non limited to family businesses. The bestselling volume SuperFreakonomics cited evidence that adult children who stood to receive a big inheritance visited an elderly parent more frequently if they had a sibling. Subsequent enquiry has questioned that conclusion, suggesting siblings may not be mercenaries afterward all.
Psychotherapists tend to distinguish between natural sibling rivalries and desires for parental attention, and pathologies that emerge when affection is in brusque supply. "Some families think good for you contest is good for children. I really don't think that is a proficient thought at all," said Hannah Sherbersky, senior lecturer in psychology at Exeter university.
In Succession, the Roy children are subjected to intense, Maxwell-way bullying and analytical by their begetter, who refuses to appreciate whatever they give him (particularly when Roman tries to buy him his favourite Scottish football game team but mistakenly buys Hearts, not Hibs). Their mother is simply every bit bad, spending the reception before her girl's wedding asking guests to bet how long the marriage will last.
The testify suggests that the Roys are not a family at all, only a conglomerate of unintegrated assets. "Nosotros're eating family-manner," said Logan's third wife, Marcia, at a go-together. "Almost like nosotros're a family," quipped Roman. Strong, who plays Kendall, has quoted a phrase attributed to Carl Jung: "Where dearest is absent, ability fills the vacuum."
But there is love in Succession. Kendall is passed over by his father to become principal executive, but still ends up singing a laudatory, cringe-inducing rap: "L to the O, G, A, Northward." Many family disputes – the Ambanis, the Murdochs – have involved siblings taking on siblings.
In 1980, Charles Koch, chief executive of Koch Industries, survived a coup endeavor past his younger brother Bill. He voted his brother out of the company at the next board meeting. Past dissimilarity, the Roy siblings jostle, only they haven't actually fought directly in Succession. They recognise that they lonely share the brunt of being Logan's children. And amend that one of them takes control than an outsider.
Ultimately, the Roys tin can hire people to cook their meals, treat their psyches, and clean up their mess. But they tin't hire people to be their family (although Connor, the eldest, most delusional child, does try). When Logan'south spiteful blood brother, Ewan, is asked to back a no-confidence vote in him, he replied: "My brother's an ex-Scot, an ex-Canadian, an ex-human being existence. But he's all the same my brother."
Family businesses have foreign dynamics, particularly around the selection of an heir. At least Oedipus didn't have to win his begetter's backing equally his named successor. The oldest is not always the best fit. "I've managed to get myself into this state of affairs, where 'what does my dad think?' is my entire fucking universe," lamented Succession'south Shiv, every bit she tries to overcome Logan's resistance to favouring a adult female. With your parent as your dominate, you may be infantilised forever.
One tempting conclusion from the prove is that yous should never endeavor to work with your family. That would be wrong. For every feuding family unit business concern, there are probably several happy ones. Eddie Hearn, the British boxing promoter who is taking over his male parent Barry'south business concern, has said of Succession: "It'south just like us!" The Hearns' rivalries seem to be contained in a successful business that is bigger than father or son could take built alone. Succession may be a modern King Lear, but Shakespeare wrote more comedies than tragedies.
"Family businesses at their all-time are world-beating," said Professor Nigel Nicholson, an evolutionary psychologist at London Business Schoolhouse. He recalls one British family business owner who felt confident plenty to surround himself with clever people because he knew he was unsackable.
Past contrast, "the level of competition and distrust in not-family unit businesses is seriously problematic", said Nicholson. (Fifty-fifty in Succession, arguably the almost duplicitous character isn't i of the Roys but Stewy, a private equity investor and academy friend of Kendall's.)
Jonathan Human knee, a former investment banker and a professor at Columbia Business organisation School, argues that family and non-family businesses are less different than they appear. Among turbulent United states of america banks in the early on 2000s, "every unmarried 1 of them had a Succession-like drama", he said.
"In that location are two different lines of research that I've never been able to reconcile," said Human knee. "One is that family businesses do better and there are reasons that make sense for that: Levels of trust, facility of communication etc. And then there's a agglomeration of really interesting research that diversity actually does permit you to cross-pollinate and learn things. What is the reverse of diverse? A family!"
Knee's working hypothesis is that organisations outperform when they are "at the extremes" – with lots of family control or lots of diversity. The bug come in the middle, when organisations are likewise heterogeneous to accept loftier trust and not diverse enough to cross-pollinate. "That'due south most of the world!"
Perhaps the about far-fetched function of Succession is Shiv working for a Bernie Sanders-style senator intent on destroying the family empire. That has no parallel in real life. But scions are speaking out: Abigail Disney campaigned against the pay of Disney'due south then principal executive, Bob Iger. Mary Trump detailed the psychological flaws of her uncle Donald (who is now suing her, accusing her of leaking his tax affairs).
James Murdoch quit News Corp's board last year and has since taken potshots at his family unit'southward Fox News. And the idea of Succession'due south Connor Roy – a man so privileged and bored that he "hyper-decants" his vino – running for president equally a libertarian has precedents: David Koch was the Libertarian political party'due south candidate for vice-president in 1980, and Steve Forbes, of the Forbes publishing family, ran for the Republican nomination in 1996 and 2000.
We wait to find what happens in the third season of Succession. But if the writers wanted textile, they could have looked to the UK's Sir Frederick Barclay, who was bewitched by his own nephews while he smoked cigars in London's Ritz Hotel (which the family unit endemic at the time).
And if the show wants a dark turn, in that location's the fate of Robert Maxwell's favourite daughter: Ghislaine Maxwell goes on trial next month on sexual practice-trafficking charges, which she denies. Past comparing, the Roys are not exceptional. They even start to look similar us.
This article has been amended since original publication to analyze the system of the Murdoch family'due south media holdings
By Henry Mance © 2022 The Financial Times
Source: Fiscal Times/ds
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