Another Top Trump Executive to Leave
Stephen Bollenbach, one of Donald J. Trump’s top executives, on Monday announced that he was leaving the troubled company that the developer hired him to salvage two years ago.
The resignation marked the latest management departure from the Trump Organization, a once glamorous but now debt-riddled collection of casinos, real estate holdings and a Northeast airline hounded by the recession.
Bollenbach, who became Trump’s chief financial officer in early 1990 as the developer’s businesses were showing serious signs of crumbling, is returning to Marriott Corp., where he worked from 1982 to 1986.
Bollenbach had served as Marriott’s treasurer and senior vice president of finance. He will become Marriott’s chief financial officer in a management realignment at the hotel chain’s Bethesda, Md., headquarters.
Trump said in a statement from his Manhattan headquarters that Bollenbach agreed in July that he would leave when the Trump group reached a comprehensive agreement with banks and other lenders. Trump said Bollenbach “wanted to stay through the completion of documentation which finalized those agreements.”
Sources close to Marriott, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agreement was hammered out only in recent weeks.
“The fact is he doesn’t need me anymore,” said Bollenbach in a telephone interview, referring to Trump, who he said is in great financial shape.
Bollenbach said he will miss working closely with Trump, but he expects their “personal friendship to last a lifetime.”
Trump’s businesses have gone through a number of key executives in recent years, with turnover particularly heavy at his casino properties in Atlantic City, N.J.
Trump Plaza has had two presidents, and Trump Castle has had at least three presidents within the past two years, while the Taj Mahal has had at least five presidents since it opened in April, 1990.
But Bollenbach described the current management team as extremely stable, noting that there were some interim steps taken after three key executives were killed in a helicopter crash in 1989.
Trump originally tapped Bollenbach to serve as a liaison between Trump and his banks, owed $3.3 billion by the brash developer.
