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Tokyo Surprise: When Irvine-based Red Robin International announced last week that longtime President William F. Miller was leaving to pursue other interests, both the company and Miller suggested that the break was his idea.

But Miller subsequently told reporters that he had been fired during a previously scheduled meeting in Tokyo with the company’s board of directors. Miller’s first hint that it wasn’t a typical meeting: The firm’s Los Angeles-based attorneys happened to be in Tokyo for the session.

Miller, who is now “looking at three or four things out West,” maintains that he is “very proud of what I did at Red Robin. We set records in sales and earnings, and in 1992, for the first time, the company had retained earnings.”