Succession in real life

Succession is by far my favorite show on TV right now. I know that the show is highly dramatized and doesn't represent the actual corporate world (if I am wrong about this please do correct me). I am curious if anyone on the website has ever been involved in a takeover battle/family feud/legal proceedings or any situation similar to what Waystar is facing. I'd love to hear your experiences vs how the show portrays it to be. I'd prefer it if it were a bankers point of view but would love to hear from anyone involved. Thanks!

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So many unrealistic things about the show but two that come to the top of my mind

  • Everyone in the inner circle wanting to be CEO. Especially with such a troubled company. So many people would rather keep their job as head of xyz and continue cashing their cushy paycheck rather than deal with being CEO
  • The “hidden” debt in episode 1 or 2… it’s a publicly traded company. They can’t just hide debt. So many people would be involved in a debt transaction of that size, it’d be impossible to hide.
 

The Ambanis in India had a similar issue when the father died. The younger brother went from 30 or so billion to 300 million while his brother is worth around 80 billion today. Really interesting story.

 

The show is very loosely based on the Murdoch family (Fox). If I remember correctly, Rupert Murdochs favorite to succeed him was his eldest son or something who grew distant from the family. However, there was no major internal family war or anything of that nature.

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I have read biographies on Murdoch and a lof of other tycoons. I think it is mostly based on Sumner Redstone who is a straight savage and there was a lot of conflict within the family around his succession and stuff.

But they take inspiration from multiple characters, for example the whole 'you are not a killer' statement that Logan made to Kendall was inspired by Trumps father i  would guess, who would always say, that you have to be a killer and stuff to his sons.

 

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