IMG Artists boss: How I kicked out my co-owner

Agency chief Alex Shustorovich has been talking to the FT for the first time about how he got rid of his partner, the convicted fraudster Barrett Wissman:

Wissman ran into legal trouble during the global financial crisis. With
rising legal fees and millions in penalties, he sold a stake to Shustorovich in
2011. Shustorovich had learnt about IMG Artists through a chance meeting with
the manager of soprano Anna Netrebko during a Metropolitan Opera
production of War and Peace, which he had funded.

Opera-loving Shustorovich has been described as a billionaire but will not
disclose his net worth. “I have done well over the years,” he told the FT. He
moved to the US as a child in 1977 with his family and earned multiple degrees
from Harvard.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union he launched a publishing company that
specialised in scientific journals, then branched out into property and other
businesses. He had a colourful life in Russia, having once been engaged to the
daughter of the mayor of St Petersburg, a political mentor of Vladimir Putin. A
US citizen, he is a Republican and a supporter of classical music and opera.

Wissman and Shustorovich were uneasy partners, and tensions between them
reached a peak during the pandemic, when the business collapsed.

“The opera houses stopped, concerts and festivals stopped, everything stopped
during the pandemic,” Shustorovich said. “So we’re in a place where we still
have the staff but we have no revenue — I mean, literally zero.”
According to Shustorovich, Wissman refused to invest more money in IMG
Artists during the pandemic. But Shustorovich injected more cash through his
company, PPI.

“Once I put my money in, I crossed that 70 per cent control threshold
determined by the bylaws,” he said. “I called in the cramdown clause, which lets
me buy everybody else out in terms proffered by me.”

Shustorovich goes to court next week in a mega-battle with Hollywood mogul Ari Emanuel’s WME.

Full Financial Times report here.

pic: Shustorovich (left) with Wissman

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