But Can He Play Hockey?
Primerica Chairman Gerald Tsai Jr. may not look like Wayne Gretzky. But could he be moving to Southern California to join his new wife in San Diego after his company is merged into Commercial Credit Corp. at the end of this year?
Some observers believe the 60-year-old financier is already making plans to join his new wife, Cynthia Ekberg, who works in the San Diego office of investment bank Kidder, Peabody & Co. and now divides her time between San Diego and New York.
There are hints. The one-time wunderkind money-manager has been a regular visitor to San Diego, and is an avid yachtsman. Tsai was in escrow on a La Jolla home last fall, though the plan to buy the house was later dropped. For the moment, the newlyweds want to keep the world guessing. Ekberg wasn’t returning calls, and a spokesman for Primerica sniffed that the company “doesn’t comment on rumors.”
Calls ‘Em Like He Sees ‘Em
Diet Pepsi has heavyweight champ Mike Tyson in its corner. Nike has basketball superstar Michael Jordan. Now Billings, Mont., has Brent Musburger.
Musburger, CBS sportscaster and former Channel 2 anchorman, this summer has starred in a business-oriented ad campaign to encourage companies to locate operations in Billings--his hometown. The ad offers to send out a videotape that Musburger made for the city in 1986, in which he calls the town “a charming and very contemporary home on the range.”
The ad produced by the Billings Chamber of Commerce does seem to stretch the truth a bit. Among its claims is that Billings is “just minutes” from Yellowstone National Park (actually, it’s about three hours by car) and that it is “the largest city between Denver and Calgary--Minneapolis and Spokane.” It is, if you don’t count Boise, Ida.
The Ax Didn’t Really Hurt
A Los Angeles outplacement firm has compiled its second annual Golden Ax Hall of Fame honoring famous victims of firings who have made a comeback in the last year.
The winners selected by McCarthy Resource Associates are: former TV talk show host Joan Rivers, who found success on the stage and as the center square on the “Hollywood Squares” game show; H. Ross Perot, who created a new company after being forced off the board of General Motors; A. Robert Abboud, late of First Chicago Corp. and Occidental Petroleum, who has spearheaded a $1.5-billion bailout of First City Bancorp of Texas; Jerry Weintraub, entertainment bigwig who is reportedly among those considering buying United Artists, the very company that fired him, and Linda Gottlieb, who bounced back after being dumped by the film company where she worked for 20 years and produced the film “Dirty Dancing.”
Wall Street was named “Terminator of the Year” for “taking 15,000 people off ‘The Street’ and putting them on the street.”