The Trouble With Tucker
March 25, 2010
Original article found at: www.restlessstyle.com (March 2010 Archives)
(All picture credits belong to JPI)
As he’s fond of reminding people, Tucker McCall came from nothing to become one of the world’s most successful – and powerful – entrepreneurs. But now, a serious ethics breach in the past threatens to unravel McCall Unlimited, Chancellor Industries and McCall himself. And that’s just the beginning. A Restless Style Exclusive…
Wall Street’s Wonderboy?
He’s not going to show.
After 45 minutes, (and two double-espresso Mocha Choka Latte Yaya’s) it’s fairly obvious that Tucker McCall, the man whose name is on lips all over the world, but especially on the lips of Genoa City’s go-get-em Business Elite, will not be claiming his usual late-afternoon spot in the Genoa City Athletic Club lounge. Did someone tip him off? Did some 6th sense alert McCall, the Meerkat to the presence of the Jackal Media lying in wait at the Watering Hole, ready to pounce and make a meal of him? Perhaps his new lieutenant, Security Expert J.T. Hellstrom is discreetly ensuring that McCall encounters as few surprises as possible in his travels around town and dissuaded his boss from adhering to routine. One thing’s for sure, McCall is definitely keeping a much lower public profile these days, and with good reason, it would seem. A long-ago payoff involving the Culture Minister of what was once Yugoslavia, who is alleged to have received a multi-million dollar Griffin painting in return for his nation’s unqualified support for a band McCall once managed has come to light decades later. The resulting scandal and breach of International Commerce laws could take McCall to the barbed-wire Country Club, and everything he’s built straight to the Bargain Bin.
“More coffee?” asks the server. Why not? Why not have some more coffee? It’s not like there’s anything else to do. Perhaps the caffeine buzz will sharpen our analytical skills as we ponder the strange phenomenon known as Tucker McCall.
We know McCall dons and sheds personas like a Las Vegas drag queen. One minute he’s Nelson Mandela, the next Robert Mugabe, say those who have worked for him or been otherwise drawn into his orbit. Further, some days he’s the Joad who made good, true to his hardscrabble roots, unimpressed by his or anyone else’s success, others, he comes off more like P. Diddy on St. Barth’s. As for any personal insight into what exactly drives him in his voracious quest to rule the business world, don’t bother; “close acquaintance” is as far as anyone seems to have gotten.
Perhaps that’s because “close acquaintance” is only as far as he’s gotten in knowing himself.
The murky circumstances surrounding his origins might have something to do with that. Until recently, all McCall knew was that his parents had adopted him as an infant from a northern Wisconsin orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity where he was left by his reportedly unwed mother. More recently, new facts have come to light about McCall’s origins, and that information and his emotional response to it have been the subject of speculation in both the Business and Gossip presses.
Perhaps McCall Unlimited is the expression of its founder’s search for an identity. From its gestation as a music management company to its current incarnation as a lifestyle conglomerate, MU has been distinguished by its aggressive expansion as well as growth, and the man behind it all is famous for starting or snapping up businesses he knows nothing about and learning while he’s doing. Today, the company includes a record label, a music publishing arm, a television, film and internet content company, a boutique hotel and nightclub in Manhattan, and an airline (aptly named Unlimited Air) which McCall hopes will mutate into the first interplanetary (yes, you read that right) airline.
Portrait of the Con-Artist as a Young Man
But while he takes delight in building businesses, McCall reportedly takes equal delight in butchering them. More than a few CEOs (and thousands of workers) have reported to work on any given Monday only to find via pink slip that over the weekend, their seemingly-safe employer’s been hijacked, stripped and sold for parts faster than a broken-down Bentley on the Cross Bronx Expressway with McCall pocketing the bulk of the proceeds. Which is why his interest in Chancellor Industries, parent company of beauty behemoth Jabot Cosmetics, has so many tongues wagging and industry observers keeping a very close eye on CEO and founder Katherine Chancellor. If McCall’s plan is to send CI to the abattoir, his initial moves are textbook: CEO, Directors, business press and employees taken completely unaware while he buys up a controlling interest in the target. Next, in a demonstration of almost feline cruelty, a short period of toying with the captured prey, and then, the bloody end. Thousands of losers, and only one winner.
It is highly likely that there is a personal dimension to McCall’s conquest of Chancellor . It has recently come to light that many years ago, then-young socialite Kay Chancellor left an infant in the care of the Sisters of Mercy. Chancellor was actually married at the time, but not to his father. Adding further to the mystery, a friend of Chancellor’s claimed maternity and for many years, Chancellor herself believed that the child she gave birth to was a girl. McCall has reportedly suspected differently for some time, and recent DNA tests have proven that his suspicions were correct.
McCall is Chancellor’s biological son.
The recent revelation of McCall’s origins and the almost feral quality to his quest for CI has led industry observers to conclude that the acquisition and threatened dismemberment of Chancellor is not so much a clever business move, but a child acting out by seeking revenge on the parent who “rejected” him. Chancellor herself reportedly thinks so.
Part of McCall’s charm (or some would say, part of his gift for subterfuge) is his interest in working all aspects of his businesses. You never know where he’ll turn up; one day he’s in the cockpit on Unlimited Air to wherever, another he’s at the mixing board at McCall Music Unlimited – the recording studio is favored by artists who like the warm sound generated by old-fashioned vacuum tube audio equipment.
But it was the night he spent bartending at Jefferson, the uber-exclusive club inside his Motel McCall in Manhattan’s meatpacking district which remains seared into former Jabot CEO Jill Abbott’s memory. Abbott, who was going through a rough patch personally at the time, was alone in New York on business and smitten by her chatty, attentive bartender. One thing led to another and Abbott found herself doing the Walk of Shame through the lobby of the Motel McCall the next morning as she hurried to meet with Kay and impresario extraordinaire Tucker McCall who was looking for partners for a new business.
“Look at Meee!”
Imagine her surprise when it was the “charming bartender” who showed up to talk about the company he wanted Chancellor to buy into…
At the time, it registered to Abbott as an amusing, if off-color coincidence, but subsequent interactions with McCall have left Abbott (and Chancellor, and a lot more of Haute Commerce GC) with a distinctly more rancid taste in their respective mouths. That flavor became downright caustic when Abbott found her job as CEO at Jabot was no longer hers because of McCall’s plan to chop up Chancellor. Abbott is reportedly certain that McCall’s interest in her was an attempt to strike back at Katherine, throw her and the company off balance, gather information from Abbott about Jabot, and drive a wedge between the two women.
McCall’s machinations have also left several members of not-so-haute GC in the difficult position of being torn between their loyalty to one of GC’s most beloved doyennes and paying the mortgage. One such person is obviously the aforementioned Hellstrom, who finds himself in the position of having to juggle family and career given the frequent absences of his high-powered wife, Victoria Newman Hellstrom, his loyalty to Chancellor and the promise of McCall’s mentorship.
One thing McCall has seriously underestimated to his great detriment is the loyalty his mother inspires both in the business community and the many threads which compose the social fabric of Genoa City. Chancellor has certainly had her moments, but on balance, it’s extremely difficult to find anyone who regularly interacts with her who hasn’t felt the benefit of her kindness and concern at some point during a rough patch in their own life. Which is probably why Chancellor is expected to re-gain control of her lifelong project thanks to an unlikely alliance struck between the Abbotts and the Newmans, led by her dear friend and ally, Victor Newman.
At press time, this saga remained very much in play and sadly, given the amount of discord McCall has managed to create, even when the dust of commerce settles, the collateral damage will remain for a long time. This opera is far from over and the Fat Lady hasn’t even warmed up yet.
Posted by spintv on March 25, 2010 4:22 PM (www.restlessstyle.com)
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