Mary Cunningham Redux

Bendix 's former veep lands at Seagram

With a Harvard M.B.A. and striking good looks, Mary E. Cunningham was bound to land a new job. But could the 29-year-old executive Wunderkind, who was forced to resign from Bendix Corp. last October, get back on the fast track at a major firm? No problem. After considering and discarding a flock of other offers, she last week accepted a "six figure" post with Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., a subsidiary of the Seagram Co., Ltd., the world's largest distiller (1980 sales: $2.5 billion). Her new position: vice president for strategic planning and project development, similar to the title she held at Bendix until her boss, Chairman William M. Agee, inadvertently fanned speculation that their relationship might be something more than professional.

At a meeting of Bendix employees, Agee, 43, remarked that Cunningham's rapid advancement in the firm had nothing to do with a "personal relationship we have." That caused a furor, and two weeks later Bendix's directors accepted Cunningham's resignation. Cunningham, who had graduated from Harvard Business School just 15 months earlier, went into seclusion.

But using Bendix's Southfield, Mich., headquarters as a mail drop, she received more than 170 job offers. She separated them into three piles, which she labeled "Fascinating--I never thought of that before," "No way" and "Maybe." Of the companies that seriously interviewed her, Cunningham said: "They did not want to focus on the Bendix event except superficially, at the outset, to ask if I could leave it behind me."

Seagram's offer came in mid-February. An executive recruiter working on Cunningham's behalf called Seagram President Philip E. Beekman and suggested an interview. Though the company had not had a strategic planning V.P.. Beekman and Seagram Chairman Edgar Bronfman were sufficiently impressed by Cunningham to better other offers she was considering, including one that reportedly would have made her president of a small firm. Said Cunningham: "I weighed several challenging opportunities, and this one is unique."

When Cunningham reports for work March 16 in Seagram's bronze-hued glass tower on Manhattan's Park Avenue, she will coordinate the company's wine ventures. They include Paul Masson and Gold Seal brands bottled in the U.S.; Barton & Guestier wines in France; vineyards throughout Europe; and the marketing for Christian Brothers Wine and Brandy.

Cunningham's Seagram job is a prize, but it may not equal the job she lost at Bendix. Agee had made her his top assistant in charge of planning the corporation's intended metamorphosis from a staid manufacturing and natural resources concern into a high-technology conglomerate. Seagram has a task of similar magnitude: it must invest the $2.3 billion that it reaped last year from the sale of its U.S. oil and gas properties. But Cunningham will not be directly involved in this enterprise.

Cunningham has insisted that she and Agee were never anything more than good friends. But she has resumed seeing Agee on a regular basis, though he lives in Michigan and she has taken an apartment in Manhattan. Cunningham's change of cities and companies may not, however, advance her goal of pursuing a career in privacy. Stanford University Business School has already made her the subject of a case study in its course, Power and Politics in Organizations.

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