The Oligarch of Classical Music

ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 15, 2009, Eliz­a­beth Sobol was flip­ping through the New York Times in her Mia­mi Beach apart­ment when a head­line and pho­to stopped her cold.
     “You son of a bitch,” she said.
     Sobol, man­ag­ing direc­tor of IMG Artists, one of the world’s pre­mier clas­si­cal music tal­ent agen­cies, was look­ing at a pic­ture of the agency’s 47-year-old chair­man, Bar­rett Wiss­man, in a sto­ry titled, “Hedge Fund Exec­u­tive Guilty of Secu­ri­ties Fraud.” Wiss­man, a Texas financier and clas­si­cal pianist, had pur­chased IMG Artists for $7.5 mil­lion in July 2003, two months after the death of the pre­vi­ous own­er, leg­endary sports impre­sario Mark McCor­ma­ck. Orig­i­nal­ly a divi­sion of par­ent com­pa­ny IMG, which also oper­at­ed busi­ness­es in sports, media and mod­el­ing, IMG Artists was an inter­na­tion­al firm with an A‑list ros­ter that includ­ed con­duc­tor André Previn, pianist Evge­ny Kissin, vio­lin­ist Itzhak Perl­man, sopra­no Renée Flem­ing and flutist James Gal­way. But McCormack’s unex­pect­ed death had thrown the company’s future into jeop­ardy. Wiss­man, a fash­ion­ably stub­bled bon vivant with a taste for linen suits and fine wines, had been wel­comed by the staff of IMG as a sav­ior. He seemed ide­al — a wealthy financier with musi­cal tal­ent.
     But, as Sobol learned from the Times, Wiss­man had late­ly enhanced his wealth by ille­git­i­mate means. He and two New York state polit­i­cal oper­a­tives had con­spired to direct bil­lions of dol­lars from the state’s pen­sion fund to pri­vate invest­ment firms in return for kick­backs. Wiss­man had per­son­al­ly made mil­lions from the pay-to-play scheme and was await­ing sen­tenc­ing.
     Angry and incred­u­lous, Sobol picked up the phone and called Wiss­man at his home in Dal­las. “You couldn’t even give me a heads up this was com­ing?” she said. Sobol demand­ed that he assem­ble the New York staff for a morn­ing meet­ing, get on the speak­er­phone and explain what his guilty plea meant for the company’s future. “And then,” she added, “you are going to ask the staff for for­give­ness.”
     Wiss­man obeyed, but he faced big­ger prob­lems than win­ning back the good graces of his staff. If he did not appease the New York state attor­ney general’s office, he was look­ing at up to four years in prison. To avoid that fate, he tes­ti­fied against his co-con­spir­a­tors and invest­ment firms that had award­ed kick­backs — and paid $12 mil­lion in penal­ties and for­fei­tures.
     IMG Artists felt the finan­cial reper­cus­sions. “We were already under­cap­i­tal­ized,” says a for­mer senior man­ag­er. “And once Barrett’s assets were frozen, there came a point where we were hold­ing back pay­ments to artists.”
     Final­ly, in 2011, Wiss­man sold part own­er­ship of the agency to a minor­i­ty share­hold­er. At first, the staff knew lit­tle more than his name: Alexan­der Shus­torovich. “We could find noth­ing, and I mean noth­ing, about him on the web,” says Alec Treuhaft, then an IMG senior VP, apart from Shus­torovich being a Russ­ian-born U.S. cit­i­zen who had made his for­tune in what sound­ed like an arcane field, pub­lish­ing sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals. Wiss­man insist­ed he would remain in full con­trol, and all but char­ac­ter­ized Shus­torovich as a silent part­ner. “Bar­rett told us, ‘You’ll nev­er see him,’” recalls Treuhaft.
     It didn’t work out that way. Before long, the staff was sum­moned to meet Shus­torovich at IMG’s New York office, and he con­found­ed expec­ta­tions. “We pic­tured some grey­ing guy in a rum­pled suit,” says Treuhaft. Instead, they encoun­tered a tall, slen­der, prep­py-look­ing man in his mid-40s. “He was much more vital than we had imag­ined, more so than Bar­rett.” Shus­torovich, who turns 55 in June, pro­ject­ed intel­li­gence — he had grad­u­ate degrees from Harvard’s law and busi­ness schools — but lit­tle charm and less tact. “He showed up with­out hav­ing any idea who was who and talked about every­thing we were doing wrong,” says Treuhaft.
     In the decade since, Shus­torovich has con­spic­u­ous­ly elbowed Wiss­man aside. “Alex is very much run­ning the show,” says Ian Small­bone, for­mer man­ag­ing direc­tor of IMG in Europe. Wiss­man, 58, is des­ig­nat­ed chair­man and Shus­torovich president/CEO, but those are not legal cor­po­rate titles. Shus­torovich says he now has major­i­ty con­trol of the pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny. Wiss­man claims his stake and Shustorovich’s are equal. The two men do not appear to agree on much, and their mutu­al dis­taste is pal­pa­ble. Wiss­man will not speak of it on the record; Shus­torovich has no such qualms.
     “Peo­ple have asked, why would I get in bed with a guy like this?” says Shus­torovich of his fel­low share­hold­er. “I thought he’d done his penance. He presents him­self like he’s a nice guy, and a lot of peo­ple fall for that crap. Now that I’ve got to know him bet­ter, I’ve learned to be more care­ful.”
     Shus­torovich says he recent­ly had to sue Wiss­man in New York State Supreme Court for fail­ing to repay a large per­son­al loan. Wiss­man is cur­rent­ly suing Shus­torovich in the same court for alleged­ly over­charg­ing the agency for rental space in a New York town­house Shus­torovich owns.
     A brawl at the top was once incon­ceiv­able at IMG Artists, but the com­pa­ny bears lit­tle resem­blance to the col­le­gial agency found­ed in 1979 by two for­mer school teach­ers. For a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry, says co-founder Edna Lan­dau, “We ran our office like a fam­i­ly.” The cama­raderie was such, she adds, that “nobody ever left.” The era of Wiss­man and Shus­torovich changed all that. Dur­ing their reign, senior man­agers have depart­ed en masse — includ­ing Sobol, who had risen from intern to U.S. man­ag­ing direc­tor — tak­ing with them decades of insti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry. They also took artists. When Char­lotte Lee, a 17-year IMG vet­er­an, left in 2015 to start her own bou­tique agency, Itzhak Perl­man went with her.
     Many of the man­agers who quit grum­bled about Wiss­man, but said the tip­ping point was Shus­torovich. Clas­si­cal artist man­agers are not called agents because they pro­vide ser­vices well beyond book­ing, and bond tight­ly with their artists, but Shus­torovich, for­mer staffers claim, was too impe­ri­ous to see man­agers as oth­er than inter­change­able. “He imme­di­ate­ly grav­i­tat­ed toward the fis­cal inef­fi­cien­cies of the busi­ness,” says Lee. “In a nor­mal cor­po­rate con­text, good for him. But this is not a nor­mal busi­ness.” She adds: “We used to call him ‘The Oli­garch.’”
     Shus­torovich has heard the crit­i­cism before, and says, “I don’t know that there’s much I could have done dif­fer­ent­ly.” He has a rep­u­ta­tion for blunt talk, but not for talk­ing to the press, and his Bill­board inter­view is his first ever with a music pub­li­ca­tion. “Alex is a dif­fi­cult per­son to get infor­ma­tion on, and shrewd about keep­ing him­self out of the lime­light,” says Small­bone. Though now a major play­er in the busi­ness of clas­si­cal music, he remains an elu­sive pres­ence in that world. He has been equal­ly coy about his oth­er ven­tures, which, in addi­tion to pub­lish­ing sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, include Russ­ian media, adver­tis­ing and real estate inter­ests. “I’m the oppo­site of Elon Musk. I try not to be the front­man,” he says. Learn­ing about facets of his com­pli­cat­ed life — Yeltsin-era wheel­er- deal­er, ura­ni­um bro­ker, mil­lion-dol­lar Trump donor — required inter­views with knowl­edge­able sources, sup­ple­ment­ed by court fil­ings and oth­er doc­u­ments, pub­lic and pri­vate. Many details about Shus­torovich appear here for the first time in Eng­lish, or anywhere.

SAY WHAT YOU WANT about Shus­torovich, he has con­tin­ued sub­si­diz­ing IMG Artists with his own mon­ey at a time when COVID-19 has dev­as­tat­ed clas­si­cal-artist man­age­ment. “I told our peo­ple from the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic, ‘I will keep our busi­ness afloat,’” he says. Not every artist-man­age­ment com­pa­ny has been so lucky. IMG is sure­ly now the world’s largest clas­si­cal music agency, fol­low­ing the unfore­seen col­lapse of its biggest state­side rival, Colum­bia Artists Man­age­ment. Last August, the music world was stag­gered by the news that Colum­bia had been felled by the pan­dem­ic and was shut­ting down for good. For decades, Colum­bia Artists was the king of agen­cies, the loom­ing giant across the street from Carnegie Hall. Its client list filled page after page of the trade mag­a­zine Musi­cal Amer­i­ca — with­out even includ­ing its ros­ter of con­duc­tors, which Colum­bia did not deign to pub­lish. There was no need. Columbia’s all-pow­er­ful boss, Ronald Wil­ford, seemed to con­trol almost every major orches­tra leader in the world. When Zubin Mehta resigned as music direc­tor of the New York Phil­har­mon­ic in 1991, the Phil­har­mon­ic board sim­ply asked Wil­ford to replace him, and he insert­ed Kurt Masur. The busi­ness had nev­er before seen a king­mak­er like Wil­ford, and prob­a­bly nev­er will again.
     When Wil­ford died in 2015, he left a suc­ces­sor, Tim Fox, who held no vot­ing stock. Colum­bia was owned by Wilford’s wid­ow and oth­er pri­vate share­hold­ers, who peremp­to­ri­ly shut the com­pa­ny down, effec­tive Aug. 31, 2020, after mak­ing their inten­tions known via email just two days ear­li­er. Even top man­agers at the agency did not see it com­ing. “Stun­ning and sad and scary,” sums up David Lai, co-pres­i­dent of bou­tique man­age­ment agency Park Avenue Artists. “If a behe­moth like Colum­bia Artists can fold so eas­i­ly, what does that mean for the rest of us? This is like our Lehman Broth­ers.”
     Anoth­er dra­mat­ic announce­ment came less than two months lat­er, this time involv­ing IMG’s oth­er biggest com­peti­tor in the Unit­ed States, Opus 3 Artists. Head­quar­tered in New York, with a satel­lite office in Berlin, Opus 3 is the lin­eal descen­dent of the agency found­ed in the 1920s by impre­sario Sol Hurok. In Octo­ber, Opus 3 dis­closed that it had been 100% acquired by the San Fran­cis­co Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music, the first time a non­prof­it insti­tu­tion has bought a for-prof­it artist agency. David Fos­ter, the long­time president/CEO of Opus 3, says that dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, “Our income shrunk to about a sev­enth or eighth of what it was,” and 40% of the staff was let go. Had it not been for the sale to SFCM, Fos­ter admits, “We might have gone the way of Colum­bia.”
     Now, with Colum­bia gone, IMG’s only rival for size is the Lon­don-based clas­si­cal agency Har­rison­Par­rott. But IMG has a greater glob­al reach, with 10 offices in sev­en coun­tries. It also has more diver­si­ty, with depart­ments for dance, jazz and world music, and tour­ing attrac­tions that include the occa­sion­al out­lier, such as an Aretha Franklin trib­ute show. Clas­si­cal music remains the core of IMG, with a ros­ter hun­dreds deep, includ­ing stars such as pianists Leif Ove And­snes and Mit­suko Uchi­da, vocal­ists Susan Gra­ham and Lawrence Brown­lee, vio­lin­ists Hilary Hahn and Sarah Chang, and con­duc­tors Semy­on Bychkov and Franz Welser-Möst.
     IMG’s sheer size and inter­na­tion­al scope are advan­ta­geous for book­ing and tour­ing, and hav­ing offices in many dif­fer­ent coun­tries cre­ates a valu­able intel­li­gence net­work. But clas­si­cal artists rarely sign with an agency mere­ly because it is big. Opus 3 is a prime exam­ple — though half the size of IMG, its ros­ter, which includes edgy con­duc­tors Marin Alsop and Ted­dy Abrams along­side stal­warts such as cel­list Yo-Yo Ma, is con­sid­ered sex­i­er.
     Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the San Fran­cis­co Con­ser­va­to­ry was not the only suit­or for Opus 3, but Fos­ter says it was the most appeal­ing one. SFCM pres­i­dent David Stull, the archi­tect of the Opus 3 pur­chase, says the ben­e­fits of the acqui­si­tion for the con­ser­va­to­ry are man­i­fold. Stull fore­sees Opus 3 pro­vid­ing invalu­able career men­tor­ing to stu­dents, and book­ing stu­dents to appear at clients’ con­certs as guest soloists. He also wants to take full advan­tage of SFCM’s new Bowes Cen­ter, a $200 mil­lion per­form­ing arts com­plex and record­ing stu­dio, com­plete with class­rooms and dor­mi­to­ries. SFCM will invite Opus 3’s clients to Bowes to record, per­form, and give mas­ter class­es — a cre­ative way of draw­ing topflight musi­cians to cam­pus in the man­ner of artists in res­i­dence.
     Though Opus 3 will remain an autonomous for-prof­it com­pa­ny, prof­it is by no means a high pri­or­i­ty for the new own­er. “We didn’t buy Opus 3 with the idea that it will be a finan­cial asset,” Stull says. “We pur­chased it in the hope that it will be an artis­tic and edu­ca­tion­al asset.” It is a unique busi­ness mod­el for clas­si­cal artist man­age­ment, and the indus­try is watch­ing to see how the part­ner­ship will work.
     Today, artist man­age­ment com­pa­nies are among the last remain­ing for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions in clas­si­cal music. Record labels are anoth­er exam­ple, but their mar­gins are slim­mer than they were in the hey­day of the CD. “Record deal advances are zero per­cent of the busi­ness now,” says Michael Benchetrit, pres­i­dent of Min­er­va Artists, an agency he found­ed in Octo­ber after the col­lapse of his pre­vi­ous employ­er, Colum­bia Artists. The fee struc­ture for clas­si­cal man­age­ment in North Amer­i­ca is a stan­dard 10% for opera and media and 20% for con­certs and recitals. The finan­cial returns tend to be unex­cep­tion­al. “The pay is mod­est,” says Treuhaft. “The real com­pen­sa­tion is psy­chic.” Con­curs David Lai: “You don’t go into this busi­ness unless you love music.”
     Indeed, many artist man­agers start­ed out as musi­cians. Nicholas Math­ias, a Lon­don-based man­ag­er who works as a pri­vate con­sul­tant in an exclu­sive arrange­ment with IMG Artists, began his career as a vio­lin­ist with the Bournemouth Sym­pho­ny. Today he han­dles most­ly con­duc­tors, includ­ing Sir Anto­nio Pap­pano and Vladimir Jurows­ki. Math­ias has a broad under­stand­ing of reper­toire, and his expert guid­ance illus­trates why clas­si­cal artists bond with their man­agers and not with the agen­cies that employ the man­agers. He can tell a guest con­duc­tor what to per­form and what to avoid in order to make a good first impres­sion on an orches­tra. “For debuts, Mahler’s First [Sym­pho­ny], Prokofiev’s Fifth, Dvorak’s Sev­enth rather than his Eighth or Ninth, and Rachmaninoff’s Sym­phon­ic Dances are good choic­es,” he says. “You must nev­er do Bruck­n­er for a debut — too risky.”
     Anoth­er dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of clas­si­cal music man­age­ment is the long lead time for per­for­mances. Opera com­pa­nies and sym­pho­ny orches­tras plan their sea­sons years in advance — some­times four and five years out. Or at least they used to. COVID-19 has cre­at­ed a logis­tics night­mare. “At the moment, I’m work­ing as hard as ever,” says vet­er­an man­ag­er Kathryn Enti­cott — not on book­ing events, but on resched­ul­ing them.
     For now, star vio­lin­ist Joshua Bell is not com­plain­ing about the post­pone­ments. After 30 years of non­stop tour­ing, he is final­ly get­ting the sab­bat­i­cal he had craved, and is prac­tic­ing Bach, shoot­ing hoops, rais­ing chick­ens and play­ing with his sons. But when his tour­ing sched­ule resumes, he tells Bill­board, “It’s going to be like fit­ting Tetris pieces togeth­er.”
     Bell’s equa­nim­i­ty is not the norm. “The artists are extreme­ly depressed,” says Benchetrit. “I’ve nev­er seen any­thing quite like it.” Even with the increas­ing pace of vac­ci­na­tion, and the grow­ing like­li­hood of indoor con­certs by the fall, clas­si­cal artists are anx­ious about the future. Sports fans will like­ly return to large are­nas – but will old­er music fans crowd back into opera hous­es and sit through six hours of Göt­ter­däm­merung? Will inter­na­tion­al orches­tral tours – one of the most pop­u­lar but also among the most com­pli­cat­ed and expen­sive of clas­si­cal events – resume as before? No one is sure.
     As of mid-May, live clas­si­cal per­for­mances in the Unit­ed States were spo­radic and livestream­ing income was neg­li­gi­ble, and the clas­si­cal indus­try was anx­ious­ly await­ing the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera’s planned reopen­ing in late Sep­tem­ber. If the Met, the nation’s largest per­form­ing arts orga­ni­za­tion, makes a suc­cess­ful come­back, it augurs well for live clas­si­cal per­for­mances in the Unit­ed States. Inter­na­tion­al­ly, the out­look varies by coun­try: For exam­ple, Aus­tralia has effec­tive­ly resumed its clas­si­cal con­certs, but for­eign artists have to endure a two-week quar­an­tine before being allowed to per­form there.
     Shus­torovich thinks a fall recov­ery is “opti­mistic,” adding that IMG’s bud­get is based on the expec­ta­tion that book­ings for 2021 will be only 25% of pre-COVID-19 lev­els. “I think that was our esti­mate last year, but it came in at 10%.”
     What­ev­er the long-term eco­nom­ic impact of COVID-19, the clas­si­cal music busi­ness will go on, because pres­tige dri­ves the busi­ness more than prof­it. It is the rea­son sports mar­ket­ing mogul Mark McCor­ma­ck took own­er­ship of IMG Artists in its ear­ly years, and let it run at low­er mar­gins than the rest of his empire. “Mark under­stood that the sports busi­ness had good names, but nev­er the lev­el of pres­tige of a clas­si­cal music busi­ness,” recalls one of McCormack’s for­mer deputies. When IMG spon­sored a 1988 pro­duc­tion of Aida at Earl’s Court in Lon­don, “Prince Charles and Princess Diana showed up. They wouldn’t have come to a golf tournament.”

THE PRESTIGE FACTOR can­not have been lost on Shus­torovich, who has been known to chauf­feur prospec­tive clients around New York City in a Rolls-Royce. He says he invest­ed in IMG Artists “because I believe clas­si­cal cul­ture is very impor­tant,” and speaks ani­mat­ed­ly of cul­ture hav­ing enriched his life. But he does not deny that being CEO of a big per­form­ing arts agency lands him in social set­tings with oth­er busi­ness lead­ers — many of them, like him­self, immense­ly wealthy. Shus­torovich has been labeled a bil­lion­aire in the Russ­ian press, though his name has nev­er appeared on Forbes’ annu­al list. “If I made an effort to be on the list, I prob­a­bly could,” he says. “I don’t dis­close my net worth. Is it sub­stan­tial? Yes.”
     He did not grow up with mon­ey. “My child­hood expe­ri­ence in the Sovi­et Union was liv­ing in a com­mu­nal apart­ment with lots of neigh­bors,” he says. “There was one com­mon bath­room for every­one, and you had to stand in line.” He found escape from the drudgery when his par­ents, Evge­ny and Maria, took him to cul­tur­al events. “Being brought by my par­ents to the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry, or to the Bol­shoi The­ater, was like trav­el­ing to a dif­fer­ent world.” The feel­ing stayed with him years lat­er, when he attend­ed his first opera at the Met in New York, where he recalls “walk­ing into a venue full of beau­ti­ful peo­ple in a beau­ti­ful set­ting with glow­ing chan­de­liers.”
     Evge­ny was a mas­ter chemist, and a mem­ber of the pres­ti­gious Sovi­et Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, but as a Jew in Sovi­et Rus­sia, his oppor­tu­ni­ties for advance­ment were lim­it­ed. Dur­ing the 1970s, the USSR, bow­ing to social pres­sure, allowed near­ly a quar­ter-mil­lion Jews to emi­grate, but the appli­ca­tion process was mad­den­ing­ly capri­cious. Evge­ny applied for him­self and his wife and son, and they received their exit visas after only four months. Evgeny’s broth­er wait­ed 10 years.
     Alexan­der Shus­torovich, age 11, and his par­ents arrived pen­ni­less in New York in 1977. Soon the fam­i­ly of three was liv­ing in Itha­ca, N.Y., where a phil­an­thropic cou­ple, Suzanne and Jaime Hecht, lent a hand to Russ­ian émi­grés. The Shus­torovich­es were “the first fam­i­ly we helped,” Suzanne recalled years lat­er in an inter­view with the Itha­ca Jour­nal. “They were just such won­der­ful peo­ple.” Evge­ny joined the research depart­ment at East­man Kodak in 1979, and the fam­i­ly moved to Rochester, N.Y. Maria, who had taught high school math­e­mat­ics in Moscow, learned Eng­lish and then Amer­i­can sign lan­guage in order to accept a full-time teach­ing posi­tion at Rochester’s Nation­al Tech­ni­cal Insti­tute for the Deaf.
     Alexan­der earned a bachelor’s degree from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, fol­lowed by a J.D. from Har­vard Law School and an MBA from Har­vard Busi­ness School. Remark­ably, while tak­ing post­grad­u­ate cours­es, Shus­torovich was shut­tling between the Sovi­et Union and the Unit­ed States. There were oppor­tu­ni­ties for him in Rus­sia, and he was a young man in a hur­ry.
     Dur­ing a trip to the USSR in 1989, Shus­torovich met British-born John Evans, today IMG Artists’ chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, and then inter­na­tion­al direc­tor of Bob Guccione’s Gen­er­al Media — the pub­lish­er of Pent­house. Evans want­ed to launch a Russ­ian edi­tion of Gen­er­al Media’s pop-sci­ence mag­a­zine, Omni. Shus­torovich had befriend­ed Yuri Osipov, a high-rank­ing offi­cial at the Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, of which Evge­ny Shus­torovich had been a mem­ber. (Alexan­der says his father nev­er met Osipov until years lat­er.) The Osipov con­nec­tion would prove invalu­able. By Sep­tem­ber, Gen­er­al Media had entered a joint ven­ture with the acad­e­my to dis­trib­ute Russ­ian Omni.
     On Dec. 26, 1991, the Sovi­et Union was dis­solved, and Boris Yeltsin, pres­i­dent of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, ush­ered in sweep­ing eco­nom­ic reforms, pri­va­tiz­ing state-owned indus­tries in a way that cre­at­ed once-in-a-life­time busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties for the well-con­nect­ed. For Shus­torovich, there was a much big­ger prize to be gained than the Omni deal. The acad­e­my pub­lished hun­dreds of sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, for which uni­ver­si­ties and cor­po­ra­tions paid hefty sub­scrip­tion fees — espe­cial­ly if they were trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. Shus­torovich had to have been aware that British media mag­nate Robert Maxwell had built his empire out of the prof­its of his first com­pa­ny, Perg­a­mon Press, a pub­lish­er of sci­en­tif­ic books and jour­nals. By 1992, with the back­ing of Gen­er­al Media, Shus­torovich had launched his own pub­lish­ing firm and, like Maxwell, giv­en it a Greek name – Pleiades. He set his sights on the academy’s jour­nals.
     In Sep­tem­ber 1992, 19 pres­ti­gious Acad­e­my of Sci­ences jour­nals pre­vi­ous­ly trans­lat­ed and pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Physics came up for grabs. AIP exec­u­tive direc­tor Ken­neth Ford could not believe that Shus­torovich, a non-sci­en­tist in his mid-20s, bankrolled by the pub­lish­er of Pent­house, was in con­tention for the rights. He com­plained about Pleiades to the British mag­a­zine Nature, which ran an arti­cle about the con­tro­ver­sy, along­side a car­toon of a leer­ing mag­a­zine sales­man telling a cus­tomer, “If you want some­thing stronger, I’ve got the Jour­nal of Exper­i­men­tal and The­o­ret­i­cal Physics under the counter.” Ford was not going to sur­ren­der to Pleiades with­out a fight.
     “I was in my office on Long Island, talk­ing to Shus­torovich on the phone,” Ford recalls today. “He was in Rus­sia and was telling me why he expect­ed to get those con­tracts, and why I should bow out. I was so angry I was shout­ing. I sus­pect I’m not the only per­son in the world to have shout­ed at Shus­torovich.” AIP ulti­mate­ly held on to the 19 jour­nals. “It’s a mir­a­cle we pre­vailed, because Pleiades had polit­i­cal con­nec­tions and clout,” Ford says. “But sci­en­tif­ic loy­al­ty tri­umphed.”
     In the long run, Shus­torovich tri­umphed. Today, Pleiades is the world’s largest pub­lish­er of trans­lat­ed Russ­ian sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, with an esti­mat­ed 90% of the mar­ket, and Shus­torovich is Pleiades’ prin­ci­pal, if not sole, own­er. In 2016, the com­pa­ny entered into a world­wide dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ner­ship with Euro­pean giant Springer Nature — pub­lish­er of the very mag­a­zine that 25 years ear­li­er had mocked Pleiades in a car­toon. “Pleiades is a big com­pa­ny, and Alex has become very wealthy as a result,” says Evans.
     The Russ­ian press has accused Shus­torovich of monop­o­liz­ing a state indus­try, and exploit­ing his busi­ness ties with the acad­e­my and Yuri Osipov. “My detrac­tors make it sound like the fairy god­moth­er came to me and gave me some big busi­ness,” he says. “It’s a com­pet­i­tive indus­try — we have over 100,000 authors’ rights con­tracts every year — and no one per­son could con­trol that vol­ume of peo­ple, includ­ing Mr. Osipov.
     “Was he a rel­e­vant per­son at the time? Yes,” says Shus­torovich of Osipov, who nine days before the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union became the acad­e­my pres­i­dent.
     While pub­lish­ing sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals made Shustorovich’s for­tune, Osipov and oth­er pow­er­ful friends sup­port­ed him in a ven­ture of far greater sig­nif­i­cance: Mega­tons to Megawatts, the pro­gram that paid Rus­sia around $17 bil­lion to destroy over 30,000 nuclear weapons, cre­at­ing enough reac­tor fuel to pro­vide, for two decades, 10% of all the ener­gy con­sumed in the Unit­ed States. It was arguably the most con­se­quen­tial busi­ness trans­ac­tion of mod­ern times — Russ­ian war­heads meant to oblit­er­ate Amer­i­can cities end­ed up light­ing them — and Shus­torovich want­ed in. His involve­ment dis­rupt­ed and ulti­mate­ly threat­ened the suc­cess of the entire pro­gram. From cor­po­rate board­rooms to the U.S. State Depart­ment, the ques­tion was repeat­ed­ly raised: What is he doing in this deal?

ONE PERSON ask­ing that ques­tion was the man who con­ceived Mega­tons to Megawatts and for 20 years helped hold it togeth­er, Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy physi­cist Thomas Neff. In Octo­ber 1991, U.S. and Sovi­et sci­en­tists and Sovi­et offi­cials met at a hotel in Wash­ing­ton to dis­cuss a dire prob­lem: What would become of the Sovi­et nuclear arse­nal after the USSR was dis­solved? Tens of thou­sands of war­heads would be spread out over vast inde­pen­dent ter­ri­to­ries, and the dying Sovi­et empire was so broke that Vik­tor Mikhailov, head of the USSR nuclear pro­gram, could not even pay the secu­ri­ty per­son­nel guard­ing the weapons. War­heads could fall into the hands of rogue states or ter­ror­ists. Dur­ing a break, Neff found Mikhailov chain-smok­ing in a cor­ri­dor, and made a pro­pos­al. If Mikhailov could col­lect and dis­man­tle Sovi­et weapons, the high­ly enriched ura­ni­um from the war­heads could be blend­ed down into nuclear reac­tor fuel worth bil­lions of dol­lars. Intrigued, Mikhailov asked how much ura­ni­um he could sell. Neff took a gam­ble and pro­posed a huge num­ber: 500 met­ric tons. Mikhailov believed he could pro­vide that amount.
     Neff’s big idea changed the world. The Mega­tons to Megawatts agree­ment was cosigned in Feb­ru­ary 1993 by Mikhailov and William F. Burns, a retired U.S. major gen­er­al. It was dubbed the “HEU deal,” short­hand for high­ly enriched ura­ni­um. By then, Yuri Osipov had intro­duced Shus­torovich to Mikhailov, who now ran Minatom — Russia’s Min­istry of Atom­ic Ener­gy — and whose sup­port Shus­torovich need­ed to get in on the HEU deal.
     Mikhailov did give that sup­port, and even attend­ed Shustorovich’s Har­vard Busi­ness School grad­u­a­tion, prompt­ing the Russ­ian media to depict Shus­torovich as Mikhailov’s “god­son.” Mikhailov debunked the idea, telling the Wall Street Jour­nal, “He’s a Jew and I’m a Russ­ian, so it’s impos­si­ble.” Neff points out that Osipov was a fre­quent vis­i­tor to the house­hold of Boris Yeltsin, and sus­pects that when Mikhailov threw his sup­port behind Shus­torovich, “He might have just been fol­low­ing orders.”
     The Mega­tons to Megawatts pro­gram was nego­ti­at­ed to run for 20 years — 1993 to 2013 — as a com­mer­cial enter­prise backed by two gov­ern­ments. Tenex, the over­seas trad­ing com­pa­ny of Minatom, was select­ed as Russia’s exec­u­tive agent, while the Unit­ed States assigned the U.S. Enrich­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (USEC), a busi­ness divi­sion of the Depart­ment of Ener­gy.
     Shus­torovich first popped up in the HEU deal in 1994. That year, a new joint stock com­pa­ny called Matek was formed by a group of Russ­ian and Amer­i­can part­ners, includ­ing the Russ­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and Amer­i­can aero­space com­pa­ny Allied-Sig­nal. Matek claimed in a press release that it could accom­plish “more rapid con­ver­sion of weapons grade ura­ni­um to peace­ful pur­pos­es.” Vik­tor Mikhailov sup­port­ed the idea of Matek replac­ing Tenex as the Russ­ian execu­tor of the HEU deal, even though Matek was 20 per­cent Amer­i­can-owned. The Matek board con­sist­ed of cor­po­rate lead­ers and senior gov­ern­ment offi­cials — and Alexan­der Shus­torovich, who was list­ed as Matek’s vice chair­man.
     Neff, act­ing as a back-chan­nel inter­me­di­ary between the U.S. and Rus­sia to help keep the pro­gram on track, was baf­fled. Who was this young man who, by Neff’s cal­cu­la­tions, stood to gross per­haps $360 mil­lion as part own­er of Matek? Neff recalls think­ing that the instruc­tions to give him a cen­tral role in the HEU deal “had to have come from above, like­ly far above.” In time, Neff saw evi­dence that the Yeltsin fam­i­ly, Russ­ian Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Cher­nomyrdin, and oli­garch Boris Bere­zovsky were sup­port­ers of Shus­torovich. Neff nev­er met Shus­torovich in per­son – he dealt direct­ly with oth­er Pleiades asso­ciates – but remem­bers a Russ­ian offi­cial describ­ing him as “a guy who can get up your ass with­out grease.”
     The Matek deal was opposed by Vladimir Potanin, an oli­garch with close ties to Ana­toly Chubais, Russia’s deputy prime min­is­ter, and the push­back was enough to undo the plan. Shus­torovich was far from deterred. In Jan­u­ary 1996, he reg­is­tered a new Delaware cor­po­ra­tion called Pleiades Group, not to be con­fused with his pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny. Pleiades Group’s stat­ed goal was no less than to buy the U.S. Enrich­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, which was about to go pri­vate — the biggest gov­ern­ment enter­prise to be sold since Con­rail. If Pleiades acquired USEC, Shus­torovich would become the U.S. exec­u­tive agent in the HEU deal. And if he had influ­ence with Minatom (and there­fore Tenex) through his asso­ci­a­tion with Osipov and Mikhailov, he could con­ceiv­ably con­trol both sides of the deal. It was, Neff says, “a breath­tak­ing­ly auda­cious scheme.”
     It was unclear how Pleiades would scrape togeth­er the financ­ing for the acqui­si­tion, but Shus­torovich had a big­ger prob­lem. The Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion was aware of his ties to Minatom, and there were pro­hi­bi­tions against USEC being sold to a for­eign agent. Shus­torovich need­ed to dis­pel the idea that he was one. Two weeks before he incor­po­rat­ed Pleiades Group, he man­aged to meet Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton as one of 15 invi­tees to a cof­fee klatsch in the White House Map Room. It is unlike­ly the HEU deal was brought up, but Shus­torovich no doubt endeav­ored to make a good impres­sion. He had come as the guest of a busi­ness friend, Demo­c­ra­t­ic donor Ronald Oehl.
     Shus­torovich was, in fact, a life­long Repub­li­can. In 2000, he dis­closed in a press state­ment to Russ­ian news­pa­per Obshchaya Gaze­ta that at 18 he had cast his first vote for Ronald Rea­gan. (He also wry­ly not­ed that on the day he was born, a rel­a­tive wrote a let­ter for him to read as an adult, instruct­ing him how to be a good Com­mu­nist.) For the HEU deal, he need­ed U.S. polit­i­cal allies, and it made sense to court influ­en­tial Repub­li­cans. His first such busi­ness ally was Max Kam­ple­man, for­mer­ly Pres­i­dent Reagan’s chief arms nego­tia­tor — but Kam­ple­man soon became uneasy over Pleiades’ Russ­ian ties, and opt­ed out.
     Then Shus­torovich met Geor­gette Mos­bach­er, a socialite, cos­met­ics entre­pre­neur, and author of a moti­va­tion­al book for women, Fem­i­nine Force. She was also the wife of Robert Mos­bach­er, for­mer sec­re­tary of com­merce to Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush. Geor­gette did not respond to inter­view requests from Bill­board, but in 1996 she told jour­nal­ist Andrew Cock­burn that Shus­torovich had been intro­duced to her as some­one who could help her sell her Borgh­ese cos­met­ics line in Rus­sia. He agreed to assist, she explained to Cock­burn, pro­vid­ed her hus­band joined his com­pa­ny. In Octo­ber 1996, Robert Mos­bach­er became chair­man of Pleiades Group. James Bak­er IV, son of the for­mer sec­re­tary of state, also was hired as Pleiades’ cor­po­rate coun­sel.
     Pleiades now had more cred­i­bil­i­ty with the U.S. gov­ern­ment — “a clean bill,” Robert Mos­bach­er told the Wall Street Jour­nal — but by then buy­ing USEC had tak­en a back seat to oth­er mon­ey­mak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in the HEU deal. The nat­ur­al ura­ni­um con­tent of the nuclear fuel shipped by Rus­sia was a state asset, just like gold. Under the terms of the Mega­tons to Megawatts agree­ment, it had to be replaced with ore ware­housed in the Unit­ed States, or its equiv­a­lent sale val­ue — an esti­mat­ed $4 bil­lion over the span of the pro­gram. The bro­ker for that ura­ni­um stood to make a hand­some prof­it, while help­ing Rus­sia replen­ish its near-emp­ty cof­fers. Came­co, a Cana­di­an ura­ni­um trad­ing com­pa­ny, made a bid to be sales agent, as did Coge­ma, a French nuclear com­pa­ny. Pleiades, which had no expe­ri­ence in the ura­ni­um mar­ket, also put itself in the run­ning.
     In a March 1998 arti­cle head­lined “Ura­ni­um-Gate,” the Russ­ian busi­ness dai­ly Kom­m­er­sant report­ed what hap­pened. “The Minatom lead­er­ship opt­ed for the Pleiades com­pa­ny, pre­vi­ous­ly unknown to any­one. It is led by the Sovi­et émi­gré Alexan­der Shustorovich…who does not like to appear in pub­lic.… No one knows how Shus­torovich charmed the lead­ers of Minatom.” Under the terms of an April 4, 1997, agree­ment between Pleiades and Tenex, Pleiades would store the ura­ni­um for two years in antic­i­pa­tion of mar­ket prices going up and Rus­sia get­ting more mon­ey. But in real­i­ty, Neff says, there was no rea­son to expect prices to rise. Mean­while, Pleiades could con­ceiv­ably bor­row mon­ey against the stock­pile, while the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion got noth­ing. “Incom­pre­hen­si­ble,” an unnamed Minatom employ­ee told Kom­m­er­sant. The news­pa­per stat­ed: “With­out any guar­an­tees of pay­ment, Russ­ian state assets worth about $700 mil­lion will be kept at Alexan­der Shustorovich’s dis­pos­al.”
     Whether or not the $700 mil­lion esti­mate was accu­rate, Pleiades had thrown a mon­key wrench into the HEU deal. Yeltsin was under pres­sure, and the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion was alarmed. Naseer Hashim, senior VP of Pleiades, asked Neff to lend his sup­port. (Hashim did not respond to inter­view requests for this arti­cle, but he told Der Spiegel in 1996 that he and Shus­torovich had got­ten into the HEU deal “to do God’s work.”) Neff was not dis­posed to help Pleiades. On March 8, 1998, he wrote a memo to the office of Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore, and report­ed: “There is no mon­ey from [the nat­ur­al] ura­ni­um because Minatom chose to do busi­ness with inex­pe­ri­enced friends of Russ­ian offi­cials when it could have done a good deal with major west­ern com­pa­nies that could pay imme­di­ate­ly.”
     By that time, Pleiades’ sta­tus in the HEU deal was already imper­iled. A week ear­li­er, Yeltsin had sum­moned Mikhailov to his office and asked for his res­ig­na­tion. There was spec­u­la­tion that Mikhailov was pushed out of Minatom because of the Pleiades con­tro­ver­sy, although he denied it. An increas­ing­ly hos­tile Russ­ian press had tak­en to call­ing Shus­torovich “ura­ni­um boy.” Mikhailov’s replace­ment, Yevge­ny Adamov, no fan of Pleiades, essen­tial­ly tore up the company’s April 1997 agree­ment with Tenex, and ulti­mate­ly made a joint deal with the Cana­di­an and French firms, in addi­tion to a Ger­many-based ura­ni­um bro­ker.
     The long delay in Rus­sia receiv­ing mon­ey for the nat­ur­al ura­ni­um took its toll. At a Moscow sum­mit on Sept. 2, 1998, Yeltsin informed Clin­ton that Rus­sia was pulling out of Mega­tons to Megawatts. Clin­ton asked Yeltsin to give him a chance to find a solu­tion. The fol­low­ing month, even though the pro­gram was not sup­posed to use pub­lic funds, Con­gress approved pay­ing Rus­sia $325 mil­lion for two years’ worth of nat­ur­al ura­ni­um, sav­ing the HEU deal and putting an end to Pleiades’ involve­ment.
     Shus­torovich was not ready to give up, and he ini­ti­at­ed a round of law­suits, all of them unsuc­cess­ful, includ­ing a $1 bil­lion suit against the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment filed in Stock­holm. Pleiades went after Tenex in New York fed­er­al court for alleged­ly breach­ing its 1997 agree­ment. A U.S. lawyer for Tenex says, “Shus­torovich was smart and strate­gic, but his agree­ment was not what he claimed.” The judge, Thomas Greisa, appeared to con­cur, com­ment­ing from the bench that the pur­port­ed con­tract struck him as “a head walk­ing around with­out a body.” Then the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion weighed in with a state­ment of inter­est request­ing that the Tenex case be dis­missed on nation­al secu­ri­ty grounds. “That was extra­or­di­nary,” the lawyer says. “The state depart­ment pol­i­cy is nev­er to inter­vene at the dis­trict court lev­el.” When all was said and done, Pleiades’ role in the HEU deal helped pre­cip­i­tate a U.S.-Russia diplo­mat­ic cri­sis and arguably cost U.S. tax­pay­ers $325 mil­lion.
     Today, Shustorovich’s account of the HEU deal dif­fers rad­i­cal­ly from the accept­ed his­tor­i­cal record. “Thomas Neff may think oth­er­wise, but I’m the per­son who brought the Mega­tons to Megawatts idea to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment,” he says. “I had a con­ver­sa­tion with Mikhailov in 1991, and I say, ‘What do you think of this intel­lec­tu­al idea?’ He likes it. And I was the guy on the ground mak­ing it hap­pen. Neff was nowhere in the pic­ture.” Neff calls that “non­sense,” and adds, “He’s try­ing to self-aggran­dize, as usu­al.” Neff’s role in Mega­tons to Megawatts won him the cov­et­ed Leo Szi­lard Award for “out­stand­ing accom­plish­ments by physi­cists in pro­mot­ing the use of physics for the ben­e­fit of society.”

THOUGH NO LONGER in busi­ness with Robert Mos­bach­er, Shus­torovich main­tained a last­ing friend­ship with Geor­gette, who described him in a Wall Street Jour­nal inter­view as “like a broth­er to me.” She was skilled at han­dling the press, but inad­ver­tent­ly brought Shus­torovich some unwant­ed pub­lic­i­ty. In August 2000, just before the GOP con­ven­tion nom­i­nat­ed George W. Bush for pres­i­dent, Shus­torovich, at Mosbacher’s urg­ing, wrote the RNC a check for $250,000. Through a cler­i­cal error, the check bounced. Shus­torovich offered to replace it with a cer­ti­fied check, but by then the RNC had made inquiries and learned about the ura­ni­um con­tro­ver­sy. His mon­ey was refused. A New York Post head­line read: “A Fat 250g ‘Dona­tion’ to GOP Goes A’Bouncin’.”
     Shus­torovich had an even hard­er time duck­ing the spot­light in Rus­sia, where his busi­ness ven­tures includ­ed the broad­cast fran­chise for Fash­ionTV, which fed into his sta­tus as a con­spic­u­ous­ly eli­gi­ble bach­e­lor. He was often pho­tographed escort­ing mod­els, and his wed­ding engage­ment in 2005 made him fod­der for Russ­ian gos­sip columns.
     Shustorovich’s fiancée, Kse­nia Sobchak, was a blond soci­ety girl dubbed “Russia’s Paris Hilton.” She was the daugh­ter of Ana­toly Sobchak, the first post-Sovi­et may­or of St. Peters­burg, who held the dubi­ous hon­or of being the teacher and polit­i­cal men­tor of Vladimir Putin. Ksenia’s noto­ri­ety was of a dif­fer­ent kind. She host­ed Dom‑2, a long-run­ning real­i­ty TV show marked for its vul­gar­i­ty, and occa­sion­al­ly act­ed in Russ­ian B‑movies (she was Eva Braun in a 2008 spy caper called Hitler Goes Kaput!). Lat­er, she became a polit­i­cal activist and worked to reha­bil­i­tate her image, a trans­for­ma­tion even some Russ­ian oppo­si­tion lead­ers thought gen­uine.
     Sobchak told Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da, a Russ­ian tabloid, that she met Shus­torovich on Feb. 19, 2001, at a con­cert in hon­or of her father on the first anniver­sary of his death. (Putin had wept at Anatoly’s funer­al.) Shus­torovich “court­ed me for a year, then we began to live togeth­er,” said Kse­nia. They shared an apart­ment on Tver­skaya Street, the most expen­sive shop­ping street in Moscow. Shus­torovich pro­posed in 2004, and a wed­ding was set to take place in St. Peters­burg on July 1, 2005. He would be 39, and she, 24.
     Sobchak decreed the wed­ding would be “sim­ple,” by which she meant 300 guests at the Kon­stan­tin Palace, a bridal gown from fash­ion design­er Valentin Yudashkin and a wed­ding-recep­tion band hired for $200,000: the Pet Shop Boys. One week before the cer­e­mo­ny, the wed­ding was called off. The offi­cial rea­son giv­en by the Kon­stan­tin Palace was that a close rel­a­tive of the groom had died, and the fam­i­ly was sit­ting shi­va. The real expla­na­tion, accord­ing to the gos­sip pages, was that Shustorovich’s fam­i­ly dis­ap­proved of the bride. Sobchak, for the record, said she decid­ed she was too young. She has since mar­ried twice, and has a son from the first mar­riage. Shus­torovich remains aon July 1, 2005. He would be 39, and she, 24.
     Sobchak decreed the wed­ding would be “sim­ple,” by which she meant 300 guests at the Kon­stan­tin Palace, a bridal gown from fash­ion design­er Valentin Yudashkin and a wed­ding-recep­tion band hired for $200,000: the Pet Shop Boys. One week before the cer­e­mo­ny, the wed­ding was called off. The offi­cial rea­son giv­en by the Kon­stan­tin Palace was that a close rel­a­tive of the groom had died, and the fam­i­ly was sit­ting shi­va. The real expla­na­tion, accord­ing to the gos­sip pages, was that Shustorovich’s fam­i­ly dis­ap­proved of the bride. Sobchak, for the record, said she decid­ed she was too young. She has since mar­ried twice, and has a son from the first mar­riage. Shus­torovich remains a bach­e­lor.
     Shustorovich’s engage­ment to the daugh­ter of Putin’s men­tor led to spec­u­la­tion about a Shus­torovich-Putin con­nec­tion. The evi­dence is not there. For one thing, Sobchak’s polit­i­cal activism start­ed to be tak­en seri­ous­ly when she began to speak out against Putin; and in March 2018, as a mem­ber of the Civic Ini­tia­tive Par­ty, she was one of 69 can­di­dates who opposed him in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion – a deci­sion, she claimed in inter­views, that dis­pleased him, although as jour­nal­ist Masha Gessen put it, “no one gets on the bal­lot in Rus­sia with­out Putin’s per­mis­sion.” (Putin’s chief polit­i­cal rival, Alex­ei Naval­ny, was kept off.) Sobchak gar­nered 1.68 per­cent of the vote.
     The ques­tion of a Shus­torovich-Putin con­nec­tion was exam­ined and dis­missed by inves­ti­ga­tors in the course of Robert Mueller’s probe of Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion. Shus­torovich had sent a $1 mil­lion check to Don­ald Trump’s inau­gur­al com­mit­tee — this time his mon­ey was accept­ed, no ques­tions asked. He there­by became one of six Russ­ian-born mil­lion-dol­lar donors invit­ed to an exclu­sive, black-tie “Chairman’s Glob­al Din­ner” on the eve of Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion. (Warn­er Music Group own­er Leonard Blavat­nik was anoth­er.) An FBI inquiry into whether men with sup­posed Krem­lin ties were report­ing their pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with Trump to Russ­ian intel­li­gence proved a dead end. All that is cer­tain is that for $1 mil­lion, Shus­torovich, who once described him­self as a “polit­i­cal junkie,” got to break bread with the pres­i­dent-elect. Geor­gette Mos­bach­er, who knew Trump from her New York socialite days, reaped a more tan­gi­ble ben­e­fit from his elec­tion: he made her ambas­sador to Poland.

NO ONE could have imag­ined an own­er like Alex Shus­torovich when IMG Artists was get­ting start­ed. In the late 1970s, Charles Hamlen, a French teacher and some­time pianist, had a stint as a page turn­er for a cham­ber music series, where he heard per­form­ers grum­bling about their man­agers. Artists want­ed to be lis­tened to, instead of being told what was best for them. Around that time, Hamlen met Edna Lan­dau, a for­mer choral instruc­tor at New York’s High School of Music and Art. “We had this incred­i­ble bond­ing — two school teach­ers, ide­al­is­tic about want­i­ng to help artists, car­ing more about ethics than mon­ey,” says Lan­dau. They launched Hamlen/Landau Man­age­ment in 1979.
     Eliz­a­beth Sobol, a young pianist, joined as an intern. The Hamlen/Landau office was “a small base­ment apart­ment on W. 85th Street in Man­hat­tan, with ply­wood fur­ni­ture,” recalls Sobol. “The phone rang maybe three times a week — and two of those times it was Charlie’s mom.” The out­go­ing calls were relent­less. “I’d hear Char­lie and Edna try­ing to book artists nobody ever heard of, with noth­ing to go on but pure pas­sion. When they’d final­ly nail a $500 con­tract for pianist so-and-so to play in Pad­u­c­ah, they would lit­er­al­ly do a dance of joy.”
     In 1982, Hamlen saw a 14-year-old vio­lin­ist named Joshua Bell per­form with the Philadel­phia Orches­tra after win­ning a nation­al com­pe­ti­tion. Bell lived in Bloom­ing­ton, Ind., with his father and moth­er — a research psy­chol­o­gist and ther­a­pist, respec­tive­ly. “Char­lie and I got in the car — we didn’t have mon­ey to fly in those days — and drove to the Bells’ farm­house,” says Lan­dau. Joshua appre­ci­at­ed the effort. “It said a lot,” he remem­bers. Bell signed with the small agency, but only after reas­sur­ances from Hamlen. “My psy­chol­o­gist par­ents had a heart-to-heart with Charles,” Bell says. “They told him, ‘We don’t want him to over­do it; we want him to be a kid.’ He was very sym­pa­thet­ic. They could see he was not in this just to make mon­ey.” Hamlen devel­oped Bell at a delib­er­ate pace. Many oth­er prodi­gies were pushed too hard and burned out; Bell built a career. In Octo­ber 2018, two months after Hamlen died of leukemia, Bell gave a memo­r­i­al con­cert in his hon­or.
     Hamlen/Landau now had a future star, but no mar­quee names and no big earn­ers. Few in the busi­ness took the agency seri­ous­ly. In the ear­ly 1980s, clas­si­cal man­age­ment was dom­i­nat­ed by two large firms — Ronald Wilford’s Colum­bia Artists and ICM Artists, the com­pa­ny that would one day become Opus 3. Hamlen/Landau was dwarfed by those com­peti­tors and con­stant­ly on the edge of insol­ven­cy. At one music fes­ti­val, says Lan­dau, “Char­lie and I camped out in a tent.” She recalls think­ing, “We can’t go on like this.”
     While Hamlen and Lan­dau were strug­gling to keep the lights on, anoth­er com­pa­ny own­er was on his way to becom­ing a bil­lion­aire: Mark McCor­ma­ck, the man cred­it­ed with invent­ing the sports mar­ket­ing busi­ness. As a stu­dent ath­lete at The Col­lege of William and Mary, McCor­ma­ck had dreamt of becom­ing a golf pro, until a var­si­ty tour­na­ment encounter with anoth­er stu­dent ath­lete, Arnold Palmer, made him rethink his ambi­tions. McCor­ma­ck instead got a law degree from Yale and went on to prac­tice law in Cleve­land. In 1960, he and Palmer crossed paths again and, over a hand­shake, Palmer became his first sports client. McCor­ma­ck made Palmer a mil­lion­aire sev­er­al times over through endorse­ment deals. Oth­er sports clients, includ­ing Jack Nick­laus, Gary Play­er, Rod Laver and Mar­ti­na Navratilo­va, fol­lowed by the hand­ful. McCor­ma­ck under­stood that max­i­miz­ing TV cov­er­age for his clients meant greater fame and earn­ings. He was the largest pro­duc­er of tele­vised sports out­side the net­works, and to boost cov­er­age he cre­at­ed his own tour­na­ments. McCormack’s Inter­na­tion­al Man­age­ment Group would soon make him, accord­ing to Sports Illus­trat­ed, “the most pow­er­ful man in sports.”
     Despite his suc­cess, McCor­ma­ck sensed a gap in his expand­ing busi­ness empire. IMG had become a mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant to major cor­po­ra­tions — and cor­po­ra­tions were inter­est­ed in the arts. McCor­ma­ck cred­it­ed a 1983 golf out­ing with sopra­no Kiri Te Kanawa, one of opera’s great­est stars, as his inspi­ra­tion for mov­ing IMG into clas­si­cal music, about which he was large­ly igno­rant. Te Kanawa advised McCor­ma­ck that the first thing he need­ed to learn was that at a con­cert or opera, the break was called “inter­mis­sion,” not “half­time.”
     It remained for McCor­ma­ck to find man­agers who knew the clas­si­cal busi­ness. Through a friend, invest­ment banker James Wolfen­sohn, then-chair­man of Carnegie Hall, he learned about Hamlen and Lan­dau. The two man­agers were flown to Lon­don as McCormack’s guests at Wim­ble­don — the ten­nis tour­na­ment was an IMG client — and sum­moned to meet the sports impre­sario at a town­house. They were ner­vous. “We walked up a very long stair­case to meet Mr. McCor­ma­ck for the first time,” says Lan­dau. “I looked at Char­lie and said, ‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ because I found out [French com­pos­er Hec­tor] Berlioz once lived in the same town­house.” She took that as a good omen.
     The meet­ing went well. It was decid­ed that McCormack’s cor­po­ra­tion would acquire Hamlen/Landau and rename it IMG Artists — a big brand name for what was still a tiny agency. Lan­dau recalls one remark by McCor­ma­ck that ter­ri­fied the two man­agers, how­ev­er. “He looked at us and asked, ‘Do you know who Ronald Wil­ford is?’” Of course they did. “I’m going to put him out of busi­ness,” said McCormack.

MARK McCOR­MA­CK liked to be first at every­thing. Tall and blond, he had an Ivy League bear­ing — until you sat across from him in a nego­ti­a­tion. Then he became the man the sports indus­try called “Mark the Shark.” His dai­ly sched­ule was a rig­or­ous to-do list bro­ken down into 15-minute seg­ments. McCor­ma­ck could con­sult one of his yel­low legal pads and tell you where he would be at a giv­en moment six months’ hence. At the end of a work­day, after check­ing off every item on his legal pad, he went to sleep, or, as his sec­ond wife, ten­nis dou­bles play­er Bet­sy Nagelsen, put it, “accom­plished rest.” In his best­selling book What They Don’t Teach You at Har­vard Busi­ness School, McCor­ma­ck owned up to being “very demand­ing of myself,” and con­se­quent­ly “very demand­ing of our man­age­ment exec­u­tives.”
     No one at IMG Artists believed McCor­ma­ck was too tough. “Mark liked the busi­ness, he liked the peo­ple run­ning it, and he was super sup­port­ive,” recalls one of his for­mer deputies. Artist man­agers who worked at the agency dur­ing McCormack’s reign remem­ber him fond­ly. “Those 20 years under Mr. McCor­ma­ck allowed us to grow with­out count­ing nick­els and dimes,” says Sobol.
     One day in 1985, Sobol picked up the office phone, and a man claim­ing to be Itzhak Perl­man asked for Charles Hamlen. Sobol thought it was a gag — the violinist’s bari­tone voice was easy to imi­tate — but the call was gen­uine. Perlman’s man­ag­er, ICM Artists pres­i­dent Shel­don Gold, had died of heart fail­ure at 55, and Perl­man had heard good things about Hamlen and Lan­dau. He was also a sports fan who was famil­iar with McCor­ma­ck. By the fol­low­ing year, Lan­dau was Perlman’s man­ag­er, and IMG Artists had its first house­hold name. More emi­nent artists fol­lowed, includ­ing pianists André Watts and Evge­ny Kissin.
     Though now a play­er, IMG Artists remained a small agency. McCor­ma­ck still had ideas of unseat­ing Ronald Wilford’s Colum­bia Artists. In an inter­view with British music jour­nal­ist Nor­man Lebrecht, McCor­ma­ck derid­ed Colum­bia as “an Amer­i­can out­fit.” The IMG par­ent com­pa­ny, he point­ed out, had offices on five con­ti­nents.
     McCor­ma­ck saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to out­flank Colum­bia in 1989, when Harold Holt Ltd., then the largest clas­si­cal agency in Britain, was look­ing for an investor to off­set its finan­cial trou­bles. He made a ten­ta­tive bid to buy Holt, but, before clos­ing the deal, asked one of his depart­ment heads to go over the agency’s books. Late the fol­low­ing year came a new, marked­ly low­er bid. “The rest of the board was out­raged,” says Stephen Wright, then Holt’s youngest direc­tor. “To me the revised bid stood to rea­son.”
     When McCormack’s offer was offi­cial­ly rebuffed, Wright quit Holt for IMG, tak­ing around 25 staffers, includ­ing vir­tu­al­ly all of Holt’s orches­tral tour­ing depart­ment, and many illus­tri­ous artists. The IMG ros­ter now had top-tier con­duc­tors — the glo­ry of any clas­si­cal man­age­ment agency — among them Mariss Jan­sons, Neville Mar­riner and John Eliot Gar­diner. IMG Artists was no longer a bou­tique. “We got what we want­ed,” McCor­ma­ck told Lebrecht, “the most prof­itable part of Holt’s business…and their most tal­ent­ed per­son in Stephen.”
     Wright insist­ed on IMG pay­ing Holt a six-fig­ure set­tle­ment to help keep his for­mer agency afloat, but hard feel­ings per­sist­ed for years. “I was seen as the bad guy,” he says. (Holt did sur­vive, and today is Askonas Holt, one of Britain’s lead­ing arts man­age­ment agen­cies.)
     As IMG Artists grew, a notable per­cent­age of senior man­age­ment posi­tions in the Unit­ed States were held by women. Romana Jaroff, one of the few man­agers from the McCor­ma­ck era still with the agency, says the com­pa­ny joke was that IMG stood for “It’s Most­ly Girls.” By the mid-1990s, Hamlen/Landau’s first intern, Eliz­a­beth Sobol, had risen to asso­ciate direc­tor, and on her own ini­tia­tive had begun build­ing IMG’s dance depart­ment. Her first dance client was the chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Bill T. Jones. In 1996, she want­ed to sign one of the ear­li­est hip-hop dance com­pa­nies, Ghet­toO­rig­i­nal Prods., but to land the deal, IMG had to agree to co-pro­duce the troupe’s forth­com­ing off-Broad­way show, Jam on the Groove.
     “I called Mr. McCormack’s sec­re­tary and asked to see him,” says Sobol. “The sec­re­tary asked, ‘What is the small­est amount of time you require?’ I said, ‘Sev­en min­utes.’ She said, ‘Be on the cor­ner of 74th and 5th at 2:07 p.m. His limo will pull up and you’ll get in. You will have exact­ly sev­en min­utes.’” The car arrived on cue; Sobol was dropped off at 2:14, with per­mis­sion grant­ed.
     McCor­ma­ck con­tin­ued to push him­self, and friends warned he was rush­ing head­long to an ear­ly grave. In Jan­u­ary 2003, he had a coro­nary and went into a coma. Four months lat­er, he was dead at age 72. He left behind a com­pa­ny over­lever­aged from ambi­tious expan­sion plans. IMG’s top exec­u­tives, Bob Kain and Alis­tair John­ston, laid off employ­ees, closed offices and divest­ed assets. After 20 years of sta­ble own­er­ship, IMG Artists was up for sale.

ONE MONTH BEFORE McCor­ma­ck went into the hos­pi­tal, he spoke to Wright, then the man­ag­ing direc­tor of IMG Artists Europe. “He said, ‘There’s some­one I want you to meet,’” recalls Wright. “‘He’s a Texas busi­ness­man and a pianist. I’m think­ing of bring­ing him in as a minor­i­ty share­hold­er.’” But, McCor­ma­ck told Wright, he had no qualms about turn­ing the investor down “if you’re against the idea.”
     The busi­ness­man was Bar­rett Wiss­man. “I met Bar­rett a cou­ple of times,” says Wright, “and didn’t like him. But by then, McCor­ma­ck was in a coma.” Wissman’s $7.5 mil­lion pur­chase of IMG Artists in July 2003 was 50% above the next-high­est bid. (Par­ent com­pa­ny IMG’s sports, mod­el­ing and oth­er busi­ness­es were sold in 2004 to pri­vate equi­ty firm Forstmann Lit­tle and today are joint­ly owned by Endeav­or and Sil­ver Lake Part­ners. Endeav­or also owns a small stake in IMG Artists.)
     Wissman’s offi­cial biog­ra­phy states that he began per­form­ing as a con­cert piano soloist at age 11, grad­u­at­ed cum laude from Yale in eco­nom­ics and polit­i­cal sci­ence, and earned post­grad degrees in music from South­ern Methodist Uni­ver­si­ty and the Accad­e­mia Chi­giana in Italy. In 1985, he land­ed a Wall Street job; two years lat­er, his father died, and he went home to Dal­las to run the fam­i­ly busi­ness, a col­lec­tion of mod­est-sized com­pa­nies that sold house­hold goods and oth­er prod­ucts. In the 1990s, Wiss­man found­ed a mon­ey man­age­ment firm, HW Part­ners, with Clark Hunt, a Dal­las school­mate and the grand­son of oil bil­lion­aire H.L. Hunt. “The invest­ment man­age­ment busi­ness was pret­ty suc­cess­ful,” says Wiss­man. With­in a decade, he had homes in Dal­las, Mon­tana, St. Croix and Tus­cany.
     At a 1996 con­cert at London’s Wig­more Hall, Wiss­man was, as he lat­er said in an inter­view, “swept away” by the soloist, Nina Koto­va, a 26-year-old Russ­ian cel­list and for­mer cat­walk mod­el. As a child, Koto­va stud­ied at the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry and showed ear­ly promise, but fell on hard times at 15 when her father, a vir­tu­oso dou­ble-bassist, died sud­den­ly. She moved to the Unit­ed States and found her­self in New York, too broke to afford a cel­lo. That prob­lem was solved when she aced an audi­tion at the Ford Mod­el­ing Agency, and began appear­ing in the pages of Vogue and Made­moi­selle and work­ing for design hous­es such as Chanel and Ungaro. Koto­va quit the run­way when a British man­age­ment com­pa­ny land­ed her the Wig­more Hall gig, her solo debut. Her con­cert includ­ed a self-penned work called “Sketch­es from the Cat­walk.” She got most­ly good reviews.
     Soon after Kotova’s Lon­don con­cert, Wiss­man began court­ing her. He bought her an engage­ment ring with a gem­stone “the size of your watch face,” in the words of one news­pa­per colum­nist, and the 1673 Stradi­var­ius cel­lo that had once belonged to British cel­lo leg­end Jacque­line du Pré. Wiss­man and Koto­va were mar­ried June 30, 2001, on his Mon­tana ranch.
     Once Wiss­man bought IMG Artists, he and Koto­va got to work devel­op­ing a new line of busi­ness for the agency: lifestyle fes­ti­vals — a meld­ing of music, well­ness, wine, haute cui­sine, and fine arts in a vaca­tion set­ting. The debut event, in 2003, was the Tus­can Sun Fes­ti­val in Cor­tona, Italy. Well-known artists played at reduced fees, says one for­mer IMG staffer, “in exchange for good wine, good food and free spa ser­vices in a beau­ti­ful place where there were no music crit­ics.” The suc­cess of Tus­can Sun led IMG to estab­lish lifestyle fes­ti­vals in California’s Napa Val­ley; Boca Raton, Fla.; and Sin­ga­pore. Movie stars were fre­quent guests. “I have to hand it to Bar­rett,” says Sobol. “Those fes­ti­vals were real­ly bril­liant.”
     They also pro­vid­ed show­cas­es for Koto­va, lead­ing some indus­try observers to sug­gest that Wiss­man had bought IMG to advance her career. “Not at all true,” he says. “It would have been a lot less dif­fi­cult to make a major dona­tion to a sym­pho­ny orches­tra and have her play a series of con­certs.” Koto­va was aware of the sug­ges­tion; last August, she wrote on her Face­book fan page, “I used to play at every fes­ti­val [and] that used to infu­ri­ate a lot of women in the clas­si­cal music man­age­ment busi­ness. I once heard that I wasn’t sup­posed to do it all: to be a per­former and to be an Artis­tic direc­tor of a fes­ti­val at the same time. Why not?”
     The fes­ti­vals that Wiss­man and his wife had shep­herd­ed at IMG now appear defunct, apart from the one in Napa Val­ley, which is no longer asso­ci­at­ed with Wiss­man. Indus­try observers point to this as the clear­est indi­ca­tion of his dimin­ished role at the agency. Not so, says Wiss­man, who adds, “I have sig­nif­i­cant projects in the works, includ­ing two or three lifestyle fes­ti­vals, one of them very sig­nif­i­cant.” At this time, he says, he is unable to elab­o­rate.
     Wiss­man says he bought IMG Artists for one sim­ple rea­son: “I am a huge fan of the clas­si­cal music world and a pas­sion­ate lover of the arts in gen­er­al. In fact, I love it almost too much. I don’t get to play con­certs any­more because I’m a per­fec­tion­ist. A con­cert takes me three months of work, and I don’t have time.” He adds, “I was nev­er a genius, but I was con­sid­ered a fine musi­cian.”
     There is no dis­agree­ment about his tal­ent. “He plays quite well,” Joshua Bell says. More­over, says for­mer IMG senior VP Alec Treuhaft, Wiss­man has a dis­cern­ing ear – a use­ful qual­i­ty in the co-own­er of a tal­ent agency. Sobol adds, “Despite every­thing Bar­rett put us through” with the pen­sion fund scan­dal, “he always cared about the music. He loves the artists for their artistry. In my mind, that’s his redeem­ing qual­i­ty.”
     Wiss­man lost points with the staff for hav­ing what was per­ceived as an inflat­ed sense of him­self. Some say it’s an attribute that he and Shus­torovich shared, mak­ing their even­tu­al clash inevitable. Wissman’s god­moth­er, Rachelle Klepak, since deceased, told D Mag­a­zine in 2009, “There was some­thing that made him feel that he was bet­ter than every­body else, smarter, more tal­ent­ed.” Wray Arm­strong, a for­mer depart­ment head for IMG in Lon­don, found Wissman’s ego hard to take. At a con­cert at the Great Hall of the Peo­ple for the 2008 Bei­jing Olympics, “Bar­rett tried to force him­self back­stage,” recalls Arm­strong. “He was shov­ing the guards, say­ing, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ Of course, they didn’t.”
     The pen­sion fund scan­dal hum­bled Wiss­man. Embar­rass­ing details kept emerg­ing, such as Wiss­man reward­ing a co-con­spir­a­tor by invest­ing in his movie project, a low-bud­get com­e­dy called Chooch – Ital­ian for “jack­ass” – which fea­tured a slap­stick don­key ride and a romance in a Mex­i­can broth­el. The scheme’s alleged mas­ter­mind, Hank Mor­ris, a pow­er­ful con­sul­tant to the New York state comp­trol­ler, end­ed up serv­ing over a year in the state pen­i­ten­tiary. In a closed hear­ing on Feb. 3, 2009, Wiss­man plead­ed guilty to one felony and one mis­de­meanor. Judge Lewis Bart Stone admon­ished him that unless he coop­er­at­ed ful­ly with ongo­ing cas­es and paid the nego­ti­at­ed $12 mil­lion set­tle­ment, “all bets are off,” and he could expect to do time. Three and a half years lat­er, Stone per­mit­ted Wiss­man to with­draw his felony plea, and he walked out of court a free man con­vict­ed only of a mis­de­meanor.
     The pub­lic rela­tions prob­lem that result­ed from Wissman’s con­vic­tion was addressed in June 2009, two months after the scan­dal broke, when Charles Hamlen, who had left IMG in 1993 to start an AIDS char­i­ty, was brought back as chair­man. (Edna Lan­dau had vol­un­tar­i­ly retired in 2007.) Hamlen’s appoint­ment was a cos­met­ic move — Wiss­man retained con­trol of the agency — and did not last long. In Octo­ber 2011, Wiss­man announced he was return­ing as chair­man.
     Just five months ear­li­er, a reluc­tant Wiss­man had sold a minor­i­ty posi­tion in IMG to Shus­torovich at a deal-clos­ing in Rome, Italy. “I had pre­vi­ous­ly said no to him sev­er­al times,” Wiss­man says.
     Shus­torovich says his invest­ment in IMG grew out of his deci­sion, in 2007, to finance the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera’s revival pro­duc­tion of Prokofiev’s War and Peace. As a con­se­quence of his gift, his moth­er, Maria, served on the Met’s board of advi­so­ry direc­tors for four sea­sons – an apoth­e­o­sis for an opera lover. Shus­torovich con­sid­ered it pay­back for his par­ents tak­ing him to con­certs as a child. “I nev­er went to music school, and I don’t play any instru­ments,” he says. “My par­ents were the peo­ple who put this appre­ci­a­tion of music in me.”
     His patron­age led to him meet­ing the female lead of War and Peace, sopra­no Anna Netre­bko, then an IMG client. Through Netre­bko, he met her man­ag­er, Jef­frey Van­derveen. In 2009, Shus­torovich says, “Jef­frey asked for a lunch with me. He saw me as a guy putting mon­ey behind cul­ture, and he said, ‘There’s a chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion at IMG, with Bar­rett and all his finan­cial issues, and the com­pa­ny is not doing well.’ He told me roy­al­ties to artists weren’t being paid, which was out­ra­geous. He said, ‘IMG’s got a unique posi­tion in the mar­ket, and it can fail if some­body doesn’t come in and sort things out.’”
     Shus­torovich says when he first invest­ed in IMG, he believed “cash alone would fix the prob­lems,” and had no inten­tion of try­ing to run the com­pa­ny. The staff had a dif­fer­ent impression.

DAMAGE CONTROL. That was the mis­sion Alec Treuhaft set for him­self after Shus­torovich spoke to the New York staff. One of the top vocal man­agers in the busi­ness, Treuhaft had left Colum­bia Artists for IMG in 2000, bring­ing with him vocal­ists such as Renée Flem­ing, Susan Gra­ham, Audra McDon­ald and David Daniels. It was appar­ent to Treuhaft that Shus­torovich seemed nei­ther to know nor care who he was. “He imme­di­ate­ly said sev­er­al things that made all the kids, my assis­tants, think they were going to lose their jobs,” he recalls. Shus­torovich showed an equal lack of def­er­ence to Eliz­a­beth Sobol. “After less than two min­utes, he start­ed talk­ing over me,” she says.
     Mark McCor­ma­ck had writ­ten books dis­ap­prov­ing of busi­ness-school ortho­dox­ies; Shus­torovich adhered to them — includ­ing the val­ue of bas­ing cor­po­rate deci­sions on data, a con­cept for­eign to artist man­age­ment. “We went through every MBA mod­el of how to run our com­pa­ny when Alex came in,” says Romana Jaroff, who worked with Treuhaft in the vocal depart­ment. “There were plan­ning meet­ings to dis­cuss KPI’s – key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors. Imag­ine being an artist man­ag­er for 25 years and being told all of a sud­den you have to do it dif­fer­ent­ly.” Jaroff, who remains with IMG, says, “I didn’t take it per­son­al­ly.”
     Treuhaft did. In 2013, after he and Jaroff worked over­time for weeks com­pil­ing data, they were hand­ed spread­sheets based on those num­bers. The cal­cu­la­tions were wrong. “The pro­ject­ed income of one of my clients was 60% of the cor­rect fig­ure,” says Treuhaft. “This was infor­ma­tion we all walked around with. I can tell you to this day how much Renée Flem­ing earned in 2002.” He adds, “I lost my tem­per and walked out, slam­ming the door.”
     Sobol quit the same year, after more than three decades with the agency. Today she is direc­tor of the Sarato­ga Per­form­ing Arts Cen­ter in Sarato­ga Springs, N.Y. “IMG was my whole life, my heart and soul,” she says. “I imag­ined the last work­ing breath I took would have been for IMG. But I decid­ed for the health of my soul I could not con­tin­ue.”
     David Lai, who was hired to replace Sobol, left after two years to run his own man­age­ment agency, Park Avenue Artists. Joshua Bell went with him, although he is still man­aged in Europe by IMG Artists. Bell’s book­ings are han­dled by Char­lotte Lee, the 17-year IMG vet­er­an who quit in 2015 to cre­ate Pri­mo Artists, tak­ing Itzhak Perl­man. (Lee and Lai depart­ed IMG with­in a month of one anoth­er, and remain close col­leagues.) Lai is vague about his rea­sons for leav­ing; Lee is blunt about hers. “Shus­torovich didn’t get that the tal­ent of IMG was us, the senior man­agers and the staff,” she says. “He thought artists could just be assigned to some­one else if their man­ag­er depart­ed. He learned the hard way once we all left, and the Perl­mans and Bells went with us.”
     The les­son was learned in time to avert dis­as­ter. Two Lon­don man­agers, Nicholas Math­ias and Kathryn Enti­cott, were giv­en sweet­heart deals to pre­vent them from leav­ing the fold. They now man­age their artists as inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors in exclu­sive arrange­ments with IMG Artists, which pro­vides back-office sup­port. Math­ias and Enti­cott col­lec­tive­ly han­dle around 30 top con­duc­tors and instru­men­tal­ists. Los­ing those artists would have been a gut punch to the agency.
     Shus­torovich puts a dif­fer­ent face on the Enti­cott and Math­ias deals. “I think of it as prof­it shar­ing,” he says. “It was improp­er to be pay­ing them a few hun­dred thou­sand a year for busi­ness that was worth a lot more.”
     For his part, Shus­torovich says he just wants IMG Artists to pay for itself or make a mod­est prof­it, as it did pre-COVID-19. “I don’t draw a salary or take expens­es out of the com­pa­ny,” he says, adding that his invest­ment in the agency has run into tens of mil­lions of dol­lars. “It bor­ders on char­i­ty.” Some of the mon­ey put up, he says, was to com­pen­sate artists for unpaid roy­al­ties dur­ing the peri­od of Wissman’s finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. Asked whether the open con­flict between him and Wiss­man will even­tu­al­ly lead to a part­ing of the ways, Shus­torovich says, “It is what it is. He’s a share­hold­er now.” He adds, “Time will tell.” ♦