Arthur M. Goldberg, 58, the New Jersey lawyer and businessman who turned Chicago-based Bally Entertainment Corp. into a nationwide hotel-casino powerhouse, died Thursday, Oct. 19, in Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore.
Friends said the cause was complications related to bone marrow failure.
During his six years as chief executive officer in the early 1990s, Bally spun off its fitness exercise business, quit selling instant lottery tickets and stopped manufacturing slot machines. Instead of reinvesting proceeds from those assets into Bally’s hotels and casinos, Mr. Goldberg cut the corporation’s debt to $1 billion–half of what it was when he took Bally’s helm.
“He was a bit of a visionary. He saw the consequences of actions two and three steps ahead so that he was prepared for the various opportunities he could face,” said Lee Hillman, president and CEO of Chicago-based Bally Total Fitness, for which Mr. Goldberg remained chairman of the board until his death. “He was always putting himself in the position of having options, so that ultimately he would succeed.”
When Hilton Hotels Corp. bought Bally Entertainment in 1996–making Mr. Goldberg president of its gambling business in the process–analysts credited Mr. Goldberg with making Bally worth buying.
“He took a company that was near bankruptcy and restored it,” Dean Witter Reynolds analyst Joseph V. Coccimiglio told the Tribune in 1996.
Yet when Mr. Goldberg–looking for a slightly undervalued company to invest in–took a major stake in Bally with a massive stock purchase in 1990, he later thought of it as a mistake. Neither the business nor its cash flow was what it seemed, while upper management “was totally non-existent,” he told the Tribune in 1995.
Still, he said, its middle management was just fine, and Mr. Goldberg, a pragmatist, relied on those employees for the rest of his tenure. Bally stock, worth $1 a share when Mr. Goldberg was asked to take the helm, was worth almost $30 a share when it was sold to Hilton.
Mr. Goldberg led Bally largely from his New Jersey home. Born and raised in New Jersey, he graduated from Rutgers University in 1963 and earned his law degree from Villanova Law School in 1966. He briefly worked as an attorney in Newark before taking over his father’s trucking and warehouse business in 1968.
He held executive positions in such companies as Triangle Industries in New York City and International Controls Corp. in Boca Raton, Fla., as well as serving on a number of corporate and university boards. During the first term of the Clinton administration, he also served as an adviser to the White House on business and economic matters.
Mr. Goldberg twice ran in the New York Marathon and was a noteworthy amateur weightlifter, said Hillman.
In 1998 Mr. Goldberg was named president and CEO of Park Place Entertainment when Hilton Hotels spun off the company.
He is survived by his wife, Veronica; four children; and six grandchildren. A private funeral service was planned.