Alexi Baker: CEO Hugh Marks’ new love made quick exit from Nine
Just months after being promoted, Nine’s star commercial director Alexi Baker quickly and quietly exited the business after falling for her boss, CEO Hugh Marks, who also resigned. Now they’re openly discussing baby plans, Annette Sharp reveals.
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Three months after being allocated a plush corner office – adjacent powerful Nine CEO Hugh Marks — on the executive floor of Nine’s new North Sydney headquarters, Nine’s star commercial director Alexi Baker quickly and quietly exited the business without a position to go to after falling for her boss.
On Saturday, in one of the broadsheets Marks now oversees and uses to put out corporate fires, Marks confirmed the relationship saying he and Baker want “to be happy”.
Baker left Nine following a frantic round of exit talks after the publication of a story by this columnist on September 27. Baker resigned the next day.
That story took aim at Marks’ patchy performance during the preceding year as documented in the company’s annual report released a week earlier.
It also noted the departure of a stream of CFOs in a 12-month period, notably Greg Barnes, who left the business in August 2019, and his replacement Paul Koppelman who left in July after just nine months in the position.
The story furthermore made reference to photographs of Marks picnicking in a park with his EA Jane Routledge in May and published talk Nine was on the look-out for a potential successor to Marks, with Fetch TV boss Scott Lorson named among early favourites to replace Marks, who it was said, was making noises about leaving the company at year’s end.
That news came on Saturday with an announcement that stunned many, though not this writer.
It is six months since this newspaper published photographs of Marks — once deferentially dubbed “Hollywood Hugh” by colleagues because he is so un-Hollywood — lolling horizontally on the grass alongside his EA.
On Thursday Nine chairman Peter Costello, having failed to return this writer’s calls for 12 months, was forced to acknowledge those photographs during Nine’s AGM.
“It is correct that it was published,” the former politician said, denying any implication Nine’s CEO had crossed a line regarding corporate governance.
Costello said at Thursday’s AGM: “I don’t believe there is anything that has breached the company’s policies or its code and I don’t believe it warrants any further engagement.”
It is almost a year since Marks, 54, confirmed the breakdown of his two-decade-long marriage to the mother of his four children Gayle to this writer after the question was put to him in November 2019.
“This is a private family matter and a painful time for us all. Please respect our privacy and in particular that of our children,” Marks told this newspaper, at once confirming the break-up and asking we delay publishing the story to give him more time to tell his children about the break-up.
He denied at the time he was having an extramarital affair with a staffer.
A devastated Gayle, who gave up her career to raise the couple’s children, has, say sources, since reverted to her maiden name.
Whether she knows her former husband is now planning to have a baby with Baker, 38, who is separated from her Goldman Sachs director husband Andrew McLennan and in recent years stopped calling herself Baker-McLennan, is unknown but according to Nine insiders Baker is now openly discussing baby plans.
Baker has been Marks’ right hand for some time and in 2016/2017 was nominated by the CEO, along with 15 other executives, for inclusion in a $20,000 elite US “Stanford-style university” management training program.
Her power has grown exponentially since Marks twice promoted her — initially as director of strategy and corporate development in 2016 and in February to the role managing director commercial.
She has survived as many other executives were pushed out — among them Barnes, Paul Koppleman, former finance director Simon Kelly, chief digital officer Alex Parsons, and Baker’s one-time counterpart and joint head of strategy Melanie Kansil.
In an internal memo leaked to the media in February, Marks described Baker’s newest promotion as one where she would “work closely with me as we focus on setting new operating benchmarks” across multiple businesses.
With the job came an office next door to Marks in Nine’s new North Sydney complex — one that will now go to another.
This column hears Baker has conducted numerous secret reviews on Marks’ behalf to reduce staff numbers at Nine — one of which, to the chagrin of chief sales office Michael Stephenson, reviewed Nine’s sales strategy, while another focused on marketing, promotions and publicity operations.
While the axe has fallen across the board, Nine still managed to pay Marks $646,000 in long-term incentives in the financial year to June 2020.
Nine dropped news of Baker’s departure to one of its business papers on October 1.
“I just wanted to let you know that after much thought over the last while, I’ve decided it’s time for me to move on from Nine,” Baker said in an email to colleagues.
“I have so enjoyed my time at Nine and don’t do it lightly. But with the big deals done and the business in such a great position, I think it’s time for me to explore what is next in my career.”
The affair has cost Nine not one but two of its top tier executives — something Costello and the Nine board must now acknowledge is an extremely high price to pay for turning a blind eye to a love affair.
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