Nine CEO Hugh Marks clocks off for the last time ahead of Mike Sneesby’s arrival

Nine CEO Hugh Marks finished up at his $1.5m job without fanfare or ceremony following a turbulent final year in the job, Annette Sharp reveals.

Four months after quitting media company Nine in sensational circumstances, loved-up executive “Hollywood Hugh” Marks on Friday farewelled colleagues and staff and left his $1.5 million + bonuses CEO job.

The executive finished up at Nine without fanfare or ceremony – a glowing tribute piece in Nine’s finance paper the AFR as parting gift from that publication’s editors notwithstanding – following a turbulent final year in the job.

The departing CEO is said to have declined repeated offers of a farewell send-off at the media company telling colleagues he was still too ill to enjoy it after being struck down by a mystery infection last month and checking into hospital the same week his replacement, Stan’s Mike Sneesby, was announced by Nine chairman Peter Costello — the reason Costello gave for Marks being unable to provide public comment on his successor’s appointment.

Happily we can report Marks looked to be in fine health on Tuesday evening when he slipped into The Star casino’s Lyric Theatre for a preview session of the nation’s most anticipated musical theatre production, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton.

Hugh Marks has officially finished working at Nine. Picture: Sam Mooy/Getty

Departing Nine CEO Hugh Marks and partner Alexi Baker at Hamilton in Sydney.

The couple were spotted at The Star casino for the Hamilton musical.

On his arm was Alexi Baker, Nine’s attractive former managing director commercial and the subordinate who resigned from the business and left the company a month before Marks announced his own resignation — both departures coming after the couple’s romantic attachment was discovered by Nine bosses.

Decked out in matching black and wearing mandatory face masks that enabled them to go almost undetected, had it not been for the occasional flash of red patent leather from the soles of Baker’s pricey Louboutin heels, our spies might never have spotted the couple in the crowd.

Their attendance at a low key advance preview show rather than at tonight’s celeb-studded opening night premiere suggests Marks and Baker are still working keeping a low profile.

One theatre goer managed to discreetly snap the couple while they were seated at a table outside the theatre prior to the show — Baker attentive and smiling as Marks perhaps regaled her with a spicy recap of the previous night’s MAFS episode in which alleged dangerous drugs trafficker Chris Jenson blew up his fake marriage to wife Jaimie to propel Nine to ratings glory.

Mike Sneesby will take over Marks’ role. Picture: AAP/Bianca De Marchi

Jenson is due to face a Brisbane court next month.

While Baker has confided to colleagues her plans to start a family with Marks, she is not yet wearing a ring on her left hand. In November the 38-year-old told The Australian newspaper she was yet to meet all of Marks’s four children, whose ages were then put at 14 and up. It’s likely she still has work to do in that area.

Without a new role to go to, Marks, 54, is now free to spend his days on the fairways of the Terrey Hills Golf and Country Club, the same course favoured by Nick Falloon and his son Troy, while making plans to reboot the dazzling career that spectacularly came a cropper in the months after his once admired two-decade marriage to his wife Gayle, a lawyer, ended.

Baker, meanwhile, a tennis tragic from her days at Pymble Ladies College, is also yet to announce her latest post Nine career move.

Originally published as Nine CEO Hugh Marks clocks off for the last time ahead of Mike Sneesby’s arrival