CBS Records’ Ex-Chief Barred at Headquarters

Walter R. Yetnikoff, the colorful former chief executive of CBS Records who suddenly stepped aside earlier this month, has been ordered not to trespass on CBS Inc. property and forbidden to visit CBS Records employees at the company’s headquarters in New York.

Security guards at CBS headquarters in New York have been instructed not to let Yetnikoff in the building or allow him access to CBS Records materials or files, insiders said.

The request is said to have been made to CBS Inc. by Sony Corp., which owns CBS Records. CBS Inc. leases office space to CBS Records under a five-year contract that dates back to the January, 1988, purchase of CBS Records by Sony.

Although it is standard corporate procedure to change the locks on an executive’s door for security reasons after a dismissal, the Sony action is unusual because the company has repeatedly maintained that Yetnikoff would remain with Sony as a consultant and “special adviser” to Norio Ohga, president and chief executive of Sony, “on long-term projects.”

Rick Clancy, director of communications for Sony, referred all questions regarding the episode to CBS Records and CBS Inc.: “These are internal CBS matters, and we don’t have anything to say beyond our release” last week announcing that Yetnikoff would take an immediate “sabbatical.”

CBS Records spokesman Robert Altshuler, who was in Los Angeles on Wednesday to attend a ceremony honoring Tommy Mottola, president of CBS Records’ domestic business, said he did not know how to reach Yetnikoff but added: “Walter is not banned from the CBS building.”

An aide who answered the telephone at Yetnikoff’s office in New York said the label chief was unavailable for an interview.

“At this time we are working out of an office at Columbia Pictures,” said the aide, who declined to identify herself. Columbia Pictures leases offices from Coca-Cola Co. on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Columbia was formerly owned by Coca-Cola and is now a unit of Sony.

But knowledgeable sources said that CBS Inc. received a request from Sony last week to bar Yetnikoff from the building. “He is not to be allowed upstairs,” said one person familiar with the situation.

Yetnikoff’s spacious corner office on the 11th floor of “Black Rock”--as CBS Inc.’s headquarters building is known--is being refurbished for Norio Ohga, president and chief executive of Sony. CBS Records’ senior executives are said to be now reporting directly to him.

Accounts differ about why Sony asked CBS to bar Yetnikoff.

Insiders said they believe that the move relates to Sony’s belief that files may have been disturbed in Yetnikoff’s office shortly after the Labor Day weekend, when it was announced that Yetnikoff would step aside. It is not known if the files were allegedly disturbed by Yetnikoff or one of his assistants.

Others contend that Yetnikoff’s relations with CBS Records artists had become unacceptably strained in recent weeks and that Sony no longer wanted Yetnikoff to represent the company.

Sources discounted speculation that banning Yetnikoff is related to CBS Inc.’s and Sony’s ongoing lawsuits over the $2-billion sale of the company. Since CBS Records leases offices from CBS Inc., there appears to be no legal way that CBS Inc. could have kept Yetnikoff off the premises without a request from Sony.