Paul Toback is an Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 attorney who served as chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Bally Total Fitness Corporation from December, 2002 until August 11, 2006, prior to the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2007. He received a lump sum payment for more than $3 million, and the vesting of 135,000 shares of restricted stock upon his resignation. Seven months before his resignation, Toback ceded effective control of the Bally board of directors to John Rogers

John W. Rogers, Jr.

John Washington Rogers, Jr. is an investment manager who founded Ariel Capital Management , which is the United States' largest minority-run mutual fund firm, in 1983. He is chairman and CEO of the company. He served as the Board President of the Chicago Park District for six years in the 1990s...

, chief executive of Ariel Capital Management, who was named as "lead director." Prior to his resignation, Toback alleged that major Bally shareholder Emanuel Pearlman of Liberation Investments and former Bally CEO Lee Hillman were behind calls for his ouster, which Pearlman and Hillman denied.

According to Bally's 2003 Securities and Exchange Commission 10-K report, Toback was the director of administration for Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 Mayor Richard M. Daley

Richard M. Daley

Richard Michael Daley is a United States politician, member of the national and local Democratic Party, and former Mayor of Chicago, Illinois. He was elected mayor in 1989 and reelected in 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. He was the longest serving Chicago mayor, surpassing the tenure of his...

 until 1993. He then became the executive assistant to the chief of staff for then-President Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

 for two years, where he worked on the North American Free Trade Agreement

North American Free Trade Agreement

The North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA is an agreement signed by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada – United States Free Trade Agreement...

. From 1995 to mid-1997, he was the COO

Chief operating officer

A Chief Operating Officer or Director of Operations can be one of the highest-ranking executives in an organization and comprises part of the "C-Suite"...

for a private company called Globetrotter Engineering in Chicago. He then joined Bally in 1997.