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Universal: Important to Southern California

I think I am the only executive to have had a “C” level position at just about every traditional entertainment vertical AND with being a Fortune 50 CFO (I think the youngest too at the time or one of them - 40). I was really passionate to buy Universal back from Vivendi with a private equity group I put together called Universal Partners. It was really important to me to keep Universal together and not sold off in pieces for Los Angeles, Lew Wasserman, Jules Stein, Sid Sheinberg and current employees. I was proud to be on the same page in a feature in the Financial Times handicapping the likely winner with such respected executives as John Malone, Edgar Bronfman, Sumner Redstone, Mel Karmazin,. Bob Wright, Alex Yememidjian and of course Marvin Davis. It was rewarding to be noted that our competitive advantage was my strategy of creating synergies within the existing Universal family. I have always felt thinkers will beat brute force. Didn’t happen in this case, the brute force of GE ($330B size company at the time) beat our small but creative group for the Universal assets. That said GE has plenty of excellent thinkers. While I stood to make a sizable amount of money had we got the assets, my driving force was to keep Universal together, keep the jobs in LA and grow Universal. I take great pride in Los Angeles (here my entire life), Universal, the employees I had the good fortune to work with there, and the value I helped to create at Universal, the Entertainment business and what it means for Southern California. Universal is now owned by Comcast and the Roberts family and is in very good hands.


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