Word: ovitz
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...Ovitz has also been spotted at repasts with the rich. In Los Angeles he lunched at Italian trattoria Locanda Veneta with investment adviser Richard Salomon of Spears, Benzak, Salomon & Farrell, and turned up at dinner at the very chic Nobu in New York City with real estate developer Jerry Speyer and dealmaker Leon Black of Apollo Advisors. As he casts about for a new career, he will serve as a patron of the arts in Manhattan, chairing a Municipal Art Society awards dinner in March and a gala for PEN, a writers' group, in April...
...Disney, Ovitz's expensively renovated offices stand empty. His Gulfstream III jet, which he sold to the company when he went to work there, is now happily occupied by ABC president Bob Iger. Apparently Ovitz has replaced it with a more modest Westwind...
...While Ovitz is unlikely to settle for a mere job, investment banker Herbert Allen, head of Allen and Co., has told inquiring moguls that he thinks Ovitz would have no trouble raising money to acquire a midsize company--and Allen's clearly a guy who would know--though no obvious candidate springs to mind. And Gordon Crawford of the Capital Group, which controls major stakes in Disney and Time Warner, says he would consider investing in an Ovitz venture. After all, he observes, "the guy was very successful in one career." He's referring, of course, to Ovitz's work...
Meanwhile, Ovitz has been upgrading his real estate portfolio. Even as the ax was poised at Disney, he sewed up the purchase of the Dancing Bear Ranch in Aspen for $5.5 million. The 500-plus acres are near Disney chairman Michael Eisner's home, although presumably they won't be vacationing together as they have in the past. In Malibu, California, Ovitz is buying a few acres of property on a seaside bluff, a $5 million parcel belonging to Motown mogul Berry Gordy. Malibu property has a distressing habit of sliding into the sea or turning into charcoal, yet this...
...Ovitz isn't being profligate, as is clear from a story that Seagram's scion Edgar Bronfman Jr. has told friends. Years ago, Ovitz, then an agent, called Bronfman to ask him to prevent the forced retirement of Ovitz's father, who worked for a Southern California liquor distributor affiliated with Seagram. Bronfman complied. In 1995 the two had a much publicized encounter when Bronfman nearly hired Ovitz to run Universal but balked at his extravagant compensation demands. They hadn't really talked since--until Bronfman called Ovitz recently to ask whether he could drop the elder Ovitz from...