Robert A Altman

Robert A. Altman, a Washington lawyer who was acquitted of trying to defraud bank regulators in the BCCI scandal of the 1990s, then reinvented himself as the chief executive of ZeniMax Media, a video game company he built into a multibillion-dollar juggernaut, died Feb. 3 2021 at a hospital in Baltimore. He was 73. The cause was complications from a medical procedure, his son, James, said. Mr. Altman had negotiated a $7.5 billion deal in September 2020 for Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax, the Rockville, Md.-based parent company of video game giant Bethesda Softworks. Mr. Altman started ZeniMax in 1999 after partnering with Christopher Weaver, a software developer who had founded Bethesda Softworks more than a decade earlier. Initially intended as a media and technology company, ZeniMax refocused on video games in the wake of the dot-com bubble, developing and publishing megahit franchises such as Doom, Quake, Fallout, Wolfenstein and the Elder Scrolls. Mr. Altman acquired a host of game developers and used his political connections to stock the advisory board with figures such as former U.S. senator George J. Mitchell, CBS chief Les Moonves, Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe and President Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert. Long before he entered the video game industry, Mr. Altman was a sought-after lawyer, a protege to Clark M. Clifford, the former defense secretary and adviser to Democratic presidents. Mr. Altman had grown up in the District, where his father co-founded the law firm Krooth & Altman and his mother created “It’s Academic,” considered the world’s longest-running television quiz show. By the early 1990s, he was living in a 20,000-square-foot house in Potomac, Md., with his wife, former Miss World USA and “Wonder Woman” TV star Lynda Carter. Then came the fraud case, which upended Mr. Altman’s life beginning in 1991. The case centered on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, later dubbed the “Bank of Crooks and Criminals.” Prosecutors said it dealt with terrorists, drug cartels and dictators, and the company pleaded guilty to federal and state charges before closing in 1991, forfeiting $550 million in U.S. assets. Mr. Altman ultimately went to trial on his own after a judge dropped the criminal charges against Clark Clifford in 1993, citing health concerns. (He died five years later, at 91.) After four days of deliberation, Mr. Altman was acquitted of all state charges in New York. The federal charges were dropped, and in 1998 he and Clifford reached a $5 million settlement with the Federal Reserve Board. Robert Alan Altman was born in Washington on Feb. 23, 1947. His father, Norman S. Altman, was a government lawyer during the New Deal; his mother, the former Sophie Robinson, graduated from Yale Law School and worked as a local television producer before launching “It’s Academic” in 1961. Mr. Altman graduated from Woodrow Wilson High, received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1968 and earned his law degree from George Washington University in 1971. He joined the law firm of Clifford & Warnke. Clifford served as the godfather of Mr. Altman’s son, James Clifford Altman, and was best man when Mr. Altman married Carter in 1984. In addition to his wife and son, an executive at ZeniMax, survivors include a daughter, Jessica Carter Altman, a singer and lawyer; and two sisters.