Word: bendixes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Bendix: No Thanks
...more than a year, William Agee, chairman of Bendix Corp. (1981 sales: $4.4 billion) has been shopping for a high-technology company to buy with Bendix's $570 million cash trove. But when Bendix revealed last week that it had quietly acquired more than 5% of the stock of RCA Corp. (1981 sales: $8 billion), the ailing conglomerate reacted like a tough old dowager who had just been propositioned, cutting loose with the kind of language not normally used in corporate communications...
...Bendix employees and outside analysts have been voicing their complaints. Says a longtime Bendix observer: "I don't believe that a fellow with his ego, his selfishness, his offensiveness, his personal ambition can last for a long time as head of one of our major corporations...
Some employees claim that Agee is beginning to turn Bendix away from its manufacturing functions into a financial holding company. Over the past year, Agee has accumulated $572 million in cash by selling off holdings. The money has been placed in high-interest deposits while Agee seeks to acquire a company in the high-technology field. In 1981 those cash holdings earned $65.6 million in interest, and this year they could yield as much as $74 million. Agee's critics charge that he should be paying closer attention to the company's existing operations rather than just sitting...
...most public of Agee's problems is his continuing relationship with Mary E. Cunningham, 30. She resigned from Bendix in October 1980, after stories began circulating about her romantic involvement with Agee. A 1979 graduate of the Harvard Business School, Cunningham had jumped from a relatively minor post to vice president in a little over a year. Agee, who had just been divorced from his wife of 23 years, strongly insisted to the board of directors at the time that there was no romance involved, and he publicly said that they were just "very close friends." Cunningham went...