ON GRADUATING from university in 1976, Shari Redstone was adamant that she wouldn’t follow her media mogul father into the business.
Nearly three decades later, however, the daughter of Sumner Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Viacom, one of the world’s biggest media companies, finds herself in her father’s shadow. Shari is president of National Amusements, the cinema company through which the family holds its controlling stake in Viacom. Yesterday she added the role of vice-chairman of Midway Games, the software maker controlled by her father. Although she is seen by many as a natural successor to her father — he describes her as his clone — he insists she will not play an executive role at Viacom.
Her arrival in the family business is relatively recent. On graduating she entered the other family business, law, practising as a criminal defence lawyer. She married in 1980 and became a housewife, bringing up three children. After a divorce in 1993 she began a masters degree in social work before her father persuaded her into business.