from First Quarter 2010
Corporate Board Member
by John Greenwald
How tough is board service? Just ask two-time former heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman, who threw in the towel after his first board meeting. “He decided it was not the right place to be,” says Jeff Unger, vice president for investor relations at the Casual Male Retail Group in Canton, Massachusetts.
That was in 2004, soon after Foreman signed a three-year contract to endorse a line of big-and-tall clothing for the company. The former champ cited his travel schedule and “other duties related to my role as spokesperson for Casual Male” as his reason for quitting the board. Casual Male chairman Seymour Holtzman said Foreman was spending more time than expected on the company’s public-relations efforts.
Foreman, now 61, no longer has a relationship with the company. But he and Holtzman, 74, serve as co-chairs of George Foreman Enterprises in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, an outfit that licenses the Foreman name to various products, including a shoe for diabetics and a vitamins-and-minerals-enriched drink called Life Shake.
Meanwhile, the “Lean, Mean, Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine” that Foreman has separately endorsed for Salton Inc. since 1994 has passed the 100-million mark in unit sales, according to the appliance maker. Pitching electric griddles seems to suit him better than taking the heat of the boardroom.
Topic tags: corporate governance, sports
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