THOROUGHBRED RACING : Hollywood Park Paid Finnigan $1,937,000 in ’91 Compensation

The chief financial officer of Hollywood Park had a better year financially than the track did in 1991.

G. Michael Finnigan, who began working at Hollywood Park in 1989, was paid $1,937,000 in salary, bonus and stock for 1991, according to a proxy statement that was recently mailed to shareholders.

Hollywood Park’s annual report for 1991 shows that the track’s net income for the year was $1,570,000--almost $400,000 less than Finnigan’s compensation.

Finnigan, 43, probably was the highest-paid racing executive in the country last year.

Of Finnigan’s total, $378,000 was listed as base salary and annual bonus. The rest came from an unusual change-of-status clause that was in the contract that Finnigan signed when Marje Everett was still the chief operating officer of Hollywood Park.

Everett, who was also board chairman, was ousted when R.D. Hubbard took control in February of 1991 after an expensive proxy fight.

Finnigan joined Hollywood Park after a stint as an executive for Gannett Outdoor Group. He was hired by Hollywood Park when Hal W. Brown Jr., another Gannett executive, was a board member at the track and chairman of the track’s real estate division.

In mid-1989, Brown was convicted of antitrust violations in a federal court and he later resigned his track positions.

Don Robbins, general manager at Hollywood Park since 1986 and now president of the company, also had a clause in his contract that would result in bonuses if Everett was displaced. Accordingly, in addition to his $230,600 salary, as listed as in the proxy statement, Robbins will receive an additional $737,499 over the next three years.

The proxy statement also shows that Hubbard was voted an annual salary of $400,000, plus bonuses, by the board of directors three months ago.

Everett, who became a director at Hollywood Park in 1972, has said that she never took a salary. In an exchange between Everett and Hubbard at the first stockholders’ meeting after Hubbard took over, Everett asked about the track paying for a corporate apartment in Beverly Hills.

“When I start taking a salary, I’ll start paying for my living expenses,” said Hubbard, whose principal residence is in Texas.

The recent proxy statement says that in May, Hubbard began paying for the apartment, which leases for $135,000 a year.

A sampling of Hollywood Park shareholders indicated that they are disturbed by the annual report. The annual stockholders’ meeting is scheduled for Aug. 10.

Although Hollywood Park showed a profit of $1.5 million for 1991, compared to a loss of $3.2 million in 1990, Everett’s last year, the 1990 bottom line included the $9.4 million that the track lost in the proxy fight with Hubbard. Without the proxy expenses, the track would have shown a profit of more than $6 million.

Hollywood Park’s debt hovered at the $100-million mark in some of the final Everett years, but that amount was reduced considerably, mostly by the sale of Hollywood’s Los Alamitos Race Track in Orange County at the end of 1989 for $71 million.

The 1991 annual report shows that the debt is $63 million and it may have grown this year.

After spending $18 million to modernize the plant and improve the barn area, Hollywood Park has had a tough season, with small fields and slumping business; the relationship between Hubbard and the horsemen at low ebb because of the squabble about Friday-night racing; and the track’s image damaged by the nearby riots in the spring.

Hollywood Park also was jolted when United Parcel, expected to buy 30 acres of non-racing property, canceled a deal that would have been worth $18 million.

Hubbard, the principal owner of horse tracks in New Mexico and Kansas and greyhound tracks in Oregon and Kansas, is undaunted. He netted between $20 million and $35 million for the recent sale of his glass-making company. And he is talking about more changes at Hollywood Park, which will have a club for card playing if voters approve.

Hubbard and Hollywood Park also will be equal investors, at 24% apiece, in a new horse track near Dallas if they can beat out three other applicants for the license. Racing could begin by 1994. The initial tab for the Hollywood Park stockholders would be $10 million.

Strike The Gold was made the 8-5 favorite Thursday when seven horses entered Saturday’s $500,000 Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park. There will be betting on the 1 1/4-mile race at Hollywood Park, with post time at 1:40 p.m.

Strike The Gold and Pleasant Tap are the high weights at 119 pounds, with Pleasant Tap the second choice on the morning line at 5-2.

Silver Ending drew the No. 1 post, will carry 113 pounds and will be ridden by Julie Krone. The rest of the lineup is Pleasant Tap, 119, Eddie Delahoussaye; Loach, 113, Mike Smith; Strike The Gold, 119, Craig Perret; Sultry Song, 116, Jerry Bailey; Crackerbell, 112, Jean Cruguet; and Defensive Play, 115, David Flores.

Strike The Gold and Loach will run coupled in the betting, with Loach having been purchased recently by Strike The Gold’s owners to assure their late-running 1991 Kentucky Derby winner of an honest pace in his races.

Krone is riding Silver Ending in place of Jose Santos, who suffered a broken collarbone and broke his right arm in two places in a three-horse spill at Belmont on Monday. Santos, who led the country in purses four times during the 1980s, including the record year of $14.8 million in 1989, underwent surgery and will be sidelined for about six months.

Horse Racing Notes

Paseana’s stablemate, Brought To Mind, will carry 114 pounds in a $60,000 stake at Hollywood Park on Saturday, instead of running with 119 pounds Sunday in the $300,000 Vanity Handicap. . . . Paseana worked out Thursday for the Vanity by clicking off five furlongs in 58 3/5 seconds . . . Forest Glow, winner of the Hollywood Park Budweiser Breeders’ Cup a year ago, will carry 123 pounds Saturday, seven-to-12 pounds more than the opposition. Others running are Diable Rouge, Masterclass, Anjiz and the entry of Glen Kate and Bourgogne. . . . Kent Desormeaux, leading rider in the country with $7.4 million in purses, goes to Maryland, where he was once the kingpin, for Saturday’s $300,000 Frank DeFrancis Memorial Dash. Desormeaux’s mount is Dolly’s Fortune.