Billionaire buyout king Leon Black may soon make the boss of Linens ‘n Things an offer he can’t refuse.
The embattled retailer’s CEO, Robert DiNicola, is obsessed with the movie “The Godfather,” and likes to model his tough management style on that of Vito Corleone, the Mafia don played by Marlon Brando, sources told The Post.
But Black, whose buyout firm Apollo Management bought the Clifton, NJ-based company in 2005 for $1.3 billion, has “lost confidence” in DiNicola’s routine, sources said.
An Apollo spokesman counters that the charge is “inaccurate.” Linens ‘n Things did not respond to a request for comment.
Black’s beef with DiNicola, these sources said, is about poor results from his management team of older industry players who are known more for their loyalty than running a retail chain.
Tapped to run Linens ‘n Things two years ago, 60-year-old DiNicola soon raised eyebrows for quirky behavior. DiNicola frequently stayed inside his office behind closed doors for several hours a day, often with a trusted executive he calls his “consigliere,” sources said. He avoids e-mail and prefers to take business calls on his cellphone, sources said.
Meanwhile, sources say DiNicola – a respected Macy’s veteran who won praise for turning around the Zale jewelry chain several years ago – has dismissed several longtime executives, jokingly referring to the firings as “baptisms” – a “Godfather” reference to the series of grisly murders carried out during the baptism of Michael Corleone’s nephew, through which Michael consolidates power over rivals.
To fill the empty positions, DiNicola recruited execs that were old friends of his, sources said. To lead the merchandise division, he appointed Bob Homler, an old department-store colleague. Just a year earlier as chairman of the vitamin chain GNC, DiNicola had pulled Homler out of a four-year semi-retirement, during which he’d been running a gourmet coffee store in East Brunswick, NJ.
Also in May 2006, he hired another department-store veteran, Michael Larkey, as a marketing chief who sources said was ill when first approached by DiNicola.
Last month, Linens ‘n Things reported a widened fourth-quarter loss as margins plunged. The problem may soon get worse, as GE Capital has begun to clamp down on a $700 million credit line, sources said. As a result, Linens ‘n Things is late on payments to key suppliers. At least half of the company’s top-25 vendors have begun to curtail deliveries, sources said.
As the company’s woes have mounted, DiNicola’s behavior has struck some employees as odd, as if scripted from a movie. He enters the company’s headquarters through a back door, arriving late to avoid random encounters with employees, and has been known to frequently leave early, and take different routes to and from work, sources said.
“He certainly keeps a low profile,” one supplier executive told The Post. “He never seems to be around.”