Shocker! MGM Chairman/CEO Gary Barber Leaving Company After Eight Years At The Helm

Shocker! MGM Chairman/CEO Gary Barber Leaving Company After Eight Years At The Helm

Gary Barber is exiting as Chairman/CEO of MGM and MGM Holdings Inc. Its Board of Directors has initiated what they are calling “a CEO transition” to begin looking for a new chief executive officer. Barber has served at the company for the past eight years, leading its growth. MGM will provide a business update on its scheduled Q4 2017 earnings call on March 28.

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The press release was put out on business wires late today with no explanation given, and employees said they are “still trying to process this” as it happened so unexpectedly. The corporate and studio publicists then ducked and covered the remainder of the night in one of the biggest displays of unprofessional behavior this reporter has seen since the Sony/Heidi Fleiss days when everyone decided to stick their heads in the sand and pretend it wasn’t happening. We all remember how all that turned out.

They forget that, like former MGM chairman Frank Mancuso once told me, Hollywood is like a small coal mining town and there are no secrets, everyone knows everyone else’s business or at least eventually will. So dumping this late at night and not talking, thinking it will mitigate the impact, further reporting or the real story getting out is really kind of … well, stupid.

All it has done is given way to rumors about a possible sale or merger of MGM as well as misdeeds by Barber. These publicists — Sard Vebinnen’s Cassandra Bujarski and Dan Goldstein, Kristin Cotich from MGM and Clare Anne Darragh from Frank Publicity — would neither get on the phone nor return emails to answer questions about these rumors or stand up for the integrity of Barber.

MGM Holdings said the board has formed an Office of the CEO to oversee the company’s day-to-day operations during this period which will report directly to the board and include a group of divisional heads and senior executives.

They said it will have active support of the board. which is composed of Ann Mather, formerly of Pixar, Paramount Pictures and Disney; Fredric Reynolds, formerly of CBS and Viacom; Nancy Tellem, formerly of Microsoft/Xbox Studios and CBS; David Krane, CEO of Google Ventures; and James Dondero, CEO of Highland Capital Management.

“Over the past eight years, MGM has successfully built a world class company and talented team,” said Kevin Ulrich, Chairman of the Board of Directors in a statement. “With this transformation complete, MGM is uniquely positioned for exceptional future growth in the evolving entertainment landscape. Now is the right time to enable the next generation of leadership who can help drive the creativity, collaboration and partnership needed to continue the Company’s positive trajectory. Looking forward, we are committed to empowering our team to take charge, innovate and execute on the promising opportunities in front of MGM.”

Ulrich continued, “On behalf of MGM’s Board of Directors, I would like to thank Gary for his contributions and for leading MGM with the highest integrity over the last eight years. Gary has played a key role in the development and execution of our strategic plan, which laid an important foundation for MGM.”