Not Meeting Their Goals
Los Angeles boosters figured they’d take advantage of the international press covering the World Cup soccer games to tell the world that there is more to Southern California than riots, brush fires, freeway police chases and earthquakes.
So that’s exactly what they’re doing--if you can find them.
Rebuffed in their efforts to get a booth in the media center next to the Rose Bowl, officials of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau are instead camped out until July 18 at a less visible location in Pasadena’s Doubletree Hotel’s second-floor hospitality room.
“Ideally, we had requested to get into the press center at the Rose Bowl,” bureau spokesman Gary Sherwin said. “But the World Cup people wanted to keep it exclusive to the games. It isn’t as desirable as being at the World Cup, but we’re not unhappy here.”
World Cup officials familiar with the issue couldn’t be reached.
Family Ties
Barrington Associates, a boutique investment banking firm in Brentwood, has lately been running ads noting that it advised sports investors Jeffrey Sudikoff and Joseph Cohen when the two paid $60 million to buy 72% of the Los Angeles Kings hockey team from financially ailing sports mogul Bruce McNall.
Barrington was hired to negotiate with Bank of America, which was involved in the sale for two reasons. The bank had a $92-million problem loan with McNall and also had to step in at the last minute to salvage the deal by financing the purchase by Sudikoff and Cohen after their previous lenders dropped out.
As it turns out, Barrington has some pretty good connections at the bank. One of its partners happens to be Michael Rosenberg, son of the bank’s top executive, BankAmerica Chief Executive Richard M. Rosenberg.
Sudikoff acknowledged in an interview that he was aware of the connection, candidly adding that he hoped it might even help.
But Sudikoff and Barrington Managing Director Jim Freedman insist that all parties involved went out of their way to avoid any conflict of interest.
Freedman said that he personally handled all negotiations. He added that Richard Rosenberg was advised that his son’s firm was working on the deal and recused himself from any personal involvement in the matter.
Freedman also points out that Barrington was working with Sudikoff and Cohen on the deal well before Bank of America had to be called on to finance it.
One Big Happy Family
Bad timing by Viacomments, the employee newsletter for entertainment giant Viacom Inc.
The May/June issue includes a cheerful picture of top Viacom executives Sumner Redstone and Frank J. Biondi Jr. with longtime Simon & Schuster Chairman Richard E. Snyder. The occasion was a May 9 reception celebrating the return of the venerable publishing house’s name to Simon & Schuster from Paramount Publishing.
Snyder was fired from the job a little more than a month later.
