NBCUniversal Vice Chairman Ron Meyer stepped down from the entertainment company after revealing that he made a secret settlement with a woman with whom he had an affair and received extortion threats.
In a statement, Meyer said he told his family and the company that he “made a settlement, under threat, with a woman outside the company who had made false accusations against me.”
“Admittedly, this is a woman I had a very brief and consensual affair with many years ago,” said Meyer, 75.
Meyer said “other parties” learned of the settlement and tried to extort him into paying them money “or else they intended to falsely implicate NBCUniversal, which had nothing to do with this matter, and to publish false allegations about me.”
In a statement, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said that Meyer had “acted in a manner which we believe is not consistent with our company policies or values.”
Based on those actions, “we have mutually concluded that Ron should leave the company, effective immediately.”
Meyer, once called “Hollywood’s Mr. Nice Guy,” had worked for 25 years at the entertainment company, which is now a division of Comcast Corp. He was president of Universal Studios from 1995 until he was promoted in 2013 to be NBCUniversal’s vice chairman, providing strategic guidance across the media giant. In 1975, he co-founded Creative Artists Agency with fellow agents from the William Morris Agency.