A Marked Man

Cable television entrepreneur Marc Nathanson’s life the past two months has resembled a bad rerun.

Over the years people repeatedly have mistaken him for businessman and Coastal Commissioner Mark Nathanson. Both are high-profile executives, politically active, close in age and cozy with celebrities. They even once lived a block from each other, and sometimes got each other’s mail.

Marc Nathanson’s problem started when former State Sen. Alan Robbins, in pleading guilty to federal racketeering charges, publicly named the other Mark Nathanson as a participant in an extortion scheme involving a San Diego developer. Mark Nathanson denies any wrongdoing.

Needless to say, life hasn’t been easy for Marc Nathanson, whose Falcon Cable TV is the nation’s ninth-largest cable operation. People who believe that he’s in trouble express their condolences to his wife. Angry shareholders call his office demanding to know what is going on. He says it took two tense phone calls before nervous bankers at Societe Generale were persuaded that they weren’t lending to somebody under investigation.

It’s not even the first time this has happened to him. Back in 1973, Mark Nathanson was arrested on suspicion of accepting a bribe, later pleading no contest to attempted grand theft. The night the arrest hit the papers, Marc Nathanson had to persuade a skeptical City Council awarding a cable franchise he wanted that he’s not the same person.

Final Chapter

One of the people most surprised when state banking regulators shut down Independence Bank in Encino two weeks ago was Alex Gibney.

Gibney, a writer and television documentary producer, is writing a book with a section chronicling efforts to save Independence. But it suddenly failed under the weight of bad real estate loans made while it was secretly owned by the scandal-plagued Bank of Credit & Commerce International.

Gibney says he showed up at the bank’s headquarters for what he thought was going to be an interview with Chairman Fulvio Dobrich, only to find an army of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. officials liquidating the bank. Gibney said it’s not the first time a company he’s chronicled has folded--Eastern Airlines stopped flying shortly after he produced a television documentary on it.

“I’ve become sort of a corporate mortician,” he said.

Cover Boy

Is one of Wall Street’s most notorious crooks finally going public?

The cover of Worth magazine shows a grinning Ivan F. Boesky and the headline: “Boesky Bites Back” with the subtitle, “The consummate insider on how to fix the securities biz.”

Alas, Boesky remains as reclusive as ever. A spokeswoman for the new magazine said the cover was only a prototype to show prospective advertisers the kind of provocative interviews the magazine hopes to get.

Briefly. . .

Disynergy?: Northwest Airlines, whose owners include former Disney Chief Financial Officer Gary Wilson, had its new flight attendant uniforms designed by a Disney unit. . . . Great Western Bank says it won’t be taking along its life-size statue of the late actor John Wayne when it relocates its headquarters from Beverly Hills to Chatsworth this spring. . . . Peace dividend: An ad in Daily Variety offers “producers/enthusiasts” a Soviet-built “MIG 21 PF” for $250,000.