Like several other media moguls, such as Lachlan Murdoch and Roy Disney, Comcast C.E.O. Brian Roberts had the good fortune of being born into the right family at the right time. His late father, Ralph Roberts, was the founder of Comcast and served as its C.E.O. for 46 years. But it was Brian, with help and advice from his father, who turned the regional cable company into a national media powerhouse through a series of large and astute acquisitions. 

There was the landmark $72 billion acquisition, in 2001, of AT&T Broadband, the phone company’s cable business, at the time one of the largest M&A deals in history. It was an audacious and, at first, unfriendly deal, especially since AT&T Broadband was a subsidiary of AT&T and most decidedly not for sale when Roberts approached Michael Armstrong about buying the business. In the end, Roberts wore Armstrong down and put pressure on the AT&T management and board of directors to sell him the business by making public his generous offer for the subsidiary. (Along with many others, I worked on the deal as a M&A banker when I was at JPMorgan Chase.)