MCA Execs Traced to Bay Area for Talks

MCA’s top two executives departed Tuesday for a much-ballyhooed meeting with senior officials from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Neither side would would divulge the destination, but late in the day it was learned that MCA Chairman Lew R. Wasserman and President Sidney J. Sheinberg had registered at a San Francisco hotel.

The meeting was initially set in Hawaii at the posh Halekulani Hotel on Waikiki Beach, but MCA canceled its reservations Friday, after a torrent of publicity suggested that Wasserman and Sheinberg would propose a buyback of the company sold to the Japanese firm in 1990.

In Hollywood, there was a guessing game that the meeting point could be anywhere from Tahiti to the Aleutian Islands, with some executives likening the search to that for Amelia Earhart. Sources said Matsushita proposed the meeting several weeks ago, apparently to deal with worsening relations with the MCA unit. In September, Matsushita rebuffed MCA executives who were excited about a proposal to join ITT Corp. and Dow Jones in a bid for NBC. But those issues were clouded by news reports that MCA’s talented associates, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, were leaving to form their own company. That exodus apparently has alarmed the Japanese.