ON Thursday night, Charles Koppelman was in Toronto pulling a late night in a recording studio with a rising opera star.
Friday morning – a little too early, if you ask him – he boarded his Gulfstream jet and headed back to New York.
By 10:30 a.m., he was back in his office – just in time for a board meeting at Steve Madden, the trendy shoe company where he serves as acting chairman while its namesake founder fights securities fraud charges.
“I’m not running the shoe company,” the former chairman of EMI Records Group, North America explained. It’s Madden and his team who continue to pump out the latest in, well . . . pumps.
Koppelman met Madden on the golf course, joined the board four years ago and slid into the chairman post in an effort to appease Steve Madden shareholders. But running a shoe company – or a record company – is all the same to the 60-year-old Koppelman.
“Steve Madden sells shoes to the same demographic that I sold my records to,” Koppelman explained. For the record, the clunky-yet-discreet black shoes he wore on his flight back from Toronto were not made by Madden. But a year from now, when the company rolls out its first men’s line, “I’m sure I will wear them,” he smiled.
Koppelman has a lot to smile about these days.
On top of overseeing the shoe company and producing music for his small record company, Medalist Entertainment, he still serves as chairman and CEO of CAK Universal Credit Corporation. Founded with Robert D’Loren in 1998, CAK is a joint venture with Prudential Securities that provides financing to the entertainment, sports, fashion and licensing industries.
CAK made headlines last year for financing the purchase of Bill Blass Ltd. by creating the apparel industry’s version of the David Bowie bond. Previously, it securitized the assets of Sesack, a performing rights society which administers all music copyrights for Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond and a majority of country music artists.
“He’s a great entrepreneur,” said Allen Grubman, the most powerful attorney in the music industry, who counsels Koppelman on his music-related ventures. “He has the ability to do a zillion things at one time. He’s a great showman.”
Koppelman’s most recent venture may prove Grubman right.
Magnum Sports and Entertainment is Koppelman’s vision for the future. A one-stop-shop for talent management and marketing for everyone from leggy bombshells like Vendela and Veronica Webb to NFL wide receiver Antonio Freeman and NASCAR race car driver Chad Chaffin.
Koppelman took the reins of Magnum six months ago with partner Bob Gutkowski, the former president of Madison Square Garden and The Marquee Group, a collection of sports marketing companies which he sold to SFX Entertainment for more than $100 million.
Magnum was previously known as Worldwide Entertainment and Sports. It was a fledgling sports management and marketing company that traded as high as $12.50 on the Nasdaq in January but now hovers around $1.
Last week, Magnum made its first move by acquiring Ford Models, the legendary modeling agency that has, at one point, overseen the careers of Kim Basinger, Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs, Rene Russo, Vendela, Ali McGraw and Stephanie Seymour, to name but a few.
While Koppelman declined to discuss the terms of the transaction, one source close to the agency said the deal was valued at around $50 million. “We were lucky to start off our first acquisition with Ford,” Koppelman said. “It’s the most recognized brand in the industry.”
Koppelman insists the Ford management team, headed by the founders’ daughter, Katie Ford, will remain the same. What will change, he said, are the opportunities that exist for the company’s stable of models.
He intends to broaden the models’ opportunities with more acquisitions. That will include at least three or four more companies by the end of next year, he said.
He refused to say which companies were on his radar, saying only that “they will all be complimentary to Ford.”
His vision is to create a talent company that encompasses all fields – sports, music, entertainment and fashion. Once set up, clients will be able to swim freely from one area to the next – “to leverage their celebrity across the entertainment and corporate spectrum,” Koppelman said.
Now that he’s got sports and fashion under one roof, it’s likely that his next acquisition will be in music or entertainment.
But he may have some heated competition. Former SFX Chairman Bob Sillerman is on his own acquisition tear. He reecntly bought up the leading music management company, The Firm, and is still hunting for more.
Koppelman shrugged off the competition, insisting Sillerman’s approach is different. “He’s looking at it from the management side. We’re looking at it from the agency side,” Koppelman said.
Rivalries aside, Koppelman seems to be having the time of his life. “Everything I do ties in to my 35 years in the entertainment business,” he said. “It’s the same people. The same rolodex.”
Born in Brookyln and raised in Queens, Koppelman started in the music business in the late 1950s when he sang with a trio called the the Ivy Three. He got into the publishing side of the industry and hit it big with the rights to bands like the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Turtles.
He grew and grew and eventually headed up EMI Music Publishing and SBK Records with partner Martin Bandier, the current chairman of the world’s No. 1 music publisher.
Koppelman was then tapped to head up EMI’s North American division but he was booted after two years when sales fizzled.
His departure ignited a fury of nasty rumors and gossip reports claiming Koppelman spent too much money on marketing and spin – and caused his acts to burn out too quickly.
But today, Bandier supports the moves Koppelman made.
As for his supposed extravagant ways, Bandier said, “In our business, you never want to have the same mentality as your controller. And you don’t want your controller to have the same mentality as you.”
Dan Glass, now president of Artemis Records, worked closely with Koppelman at SBK Records. He said the EMI North America job took Koppelamn out of his element. “He became an executive,” Glass said.
Koppelman agreed. “As head of North America – I stopped doing what I like to do. I was in charge of the guys doing the things I liked to do,” he remembered.
“I was not doing what I loved to do. Now I am.”
Personal profile
Name:Charles Koppelman
Job:Chairman, Magnum Sports & Entertainment; Chairman and CEO, CAK Universal Credit Corp.; Chairman, Steve Madden; Chairman, Medalist Entertainment.
Age:60
Family:Married to Bunny, three children aged 34, 32 and 30
Lives:Roslyn Harbor, L.I.
Education:B.A., Long Island University
Hobbies:Smoking cigars, golf.