Frank Biondi Jr., whose financial and managerial expertise helped earn him the chief executive jobs at three entertainment giants — HBO, Viacom and Universal Studios — died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 74.

His daughter Anne Simonds said the cause was bladder cancer.

Unlike some of the men he worked for, Mr. Biondi was not flashy . He was a quiet deal maker known for giving savvy financial presentations and allowing executives beneath him the freedom to do their work without his interference.

“My basic job is to enhance the value of the assets and get some of the debt down,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1987, when he took over at Viacom . “It plays on the financial skills that I have had.”

During his nine years with Viacom. the company acquired Paramount Pictures and Blockbuster Entertainment, the video chain. But Mr. Biondi operated in the all-enveloping shadow of Sumner Redstone, the impulsive billionaire who acquired Viacom in early 1987 and became its chairman.