After Selling Company, Mills Executives Leave

The executives who run Mills Corp., the shopping mall developer in Chevy Chase that was sold in February for $7.9 billion, are leaving the company in early May, chief executive Mark S. Ordan confirmed yesterday.

Ordan, the founder of Fresh Fields grocery stores and the former chairman of Federal Realty Investment Trust, was recruited by the Mills board early last year to save a company that struggled with heavy debt and an accounting scandal that has led to a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ordan, 48, will receive a $5 million departure package, according to the company and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was also paid a salary of $695,000 and a bonus of $400,000 over the past year, according to the company.

Richard J. Nadeau, the company's finance chief, will receive more than $3 million in his severance package, and other company leaders such as executive vice presidents Greg Neeb, F. Scott Ball, Mark C. Dorigan, Mary Ellen Seravalli and Michael J. Bryant, will be paid more than $1 million each, according to the company.

Simon Property Group of Indianapolis and Farallon Capital Management, a San Francisco Hedge Fund, agreed to buy Mills in February.

"I worked with a terrific team at Mills to handle a very difficult task, where shareholder value was very much at risk and I was very pleased to achieve such a successful outcome," Ordan said.

Mills helped popularize the notion that a shopping mall could be an entertainment destination, and the company grew rapidly over the past decade, building ever grander versions of that vision. One project, Madrid Xanadu, featured an indoor ski resort. Another Xanadu slated for the Meadowlands in New Jersey, was to have a 30-story ferris wheel.

But the company took on heavy debt to finance the projects, and Ordan was at the helm when Mills sold its stake in the New Jersey project last year. An internal review later found that the company's fast growth might have contributed to accounting errors that reached about $350 million.

Mills, with 300 employees locally and regional holdings that include Potomac Mills and Arundel Mills shopping malls, lost a big chunk of its market value when its stock dropped from about $65 to about $15 a share in less than two years. The acquisition allowed Simon Property, whose 280 properties make it the largest shopping mall owner in the United States, to add holdings that include the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, Calif.

Robert Pincus, a well-known Washington banker and the lead director on the Mills board, praised Ordan's management group for helping reverse the company's slide.