WME-IMG CFO PETER KLEIN has left the company just six months after he joined it. The former Microsoft CFO is leaving for personal reasons. He will serve in an advisory position and assist WME-IMG co-CEOs ARI EMANUEL and PATRICK WHITESELL in filling his vacated position. Klein last year advised WME on its $2.4B acquisition of IMG and joined the company as CFO in the days after the deal was announced. He had close ties to WME-IMG investor Silver Lake Partners, the private equity group that has a 50% stake in the combined company. With Klein, WME outlined an aggressive cost-cutting plan for IMG that called for eliminating $151M in costs in the first 18 months of ownership. The first $14M in cuts were scheduled to be made in the first six months of ownership. The deal closed in early May (Tripp Mickle, Staff Writer). In N.Y., Claire Atkinson cites sources as saying that Klein's exit "reflects the difficulty the highly indebted company is having in meeting its cost-cutting targets, particularly within the sports agency business" (N.Y. POST, 7/9).
