`Deal Junkie' Jeff Marcus Gets A New Fix

Jeffrey A. Marcus is nothing if not enterprising. To help pay his way through college, he resorted to driving a garbage truck, then bootstrapped his way into the cable-TV industry by selling subscriptions door-to-door. Thirty years of frenzied dealmaking later, Marcus Cable Co. was so large that Microsoft Corp. co-founder and billionaire Paul G. Allen had to pay $2.8 billion last May to get him to part with it. Of that, Marcus cleared an estimated $115 million.

But Marcus hasn't stopped there. Today, he is installed as CEO of Chancellor Media Corp., which is partially owned by Dallas-based leveraged buyout firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst Inc. In his four short months on the job, Marcus, 52, has already cut a dizzying $8 billion worth of deals, some of them controversial. The biggest, a $4.1 billion deal to acquire Capstar Broadcasting Corp., should push Chancellor ahead of CBS as the country's largest radio company, with $2.5 billion in revenues, when the deal closes next year. "It would be nice to think Jeff would slow down now, but he can't," says Wes Hart, director of corporate sales for Marcus Cable. "Jeff's a deal junkie."