Word: gaffed
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...chemicals, camera-and copy-equipment complex of General Aniline & Film Corp. was by far the biggest. It has also been the longest held by the Government. Taken over in 1942 on grounds that its Swiss owners were a front for Germany's massive I.G. Farben, GAF has remained a Government fief while the Swiss and the Justice Department battled over the 93.5% interest involved (the other 6.5% is publicly held). Last week, with a compromise finally hammered out, Justice announced that it will sell 11.1 million shares of GAF-or 93.3% of all GAF stock-within the next three...
They will be buying into a company that is succeeding in spite of itself. Political pull rather than prowess has generally been the requirement for a seat on the board since 1942, and GAF's auditors, ad agencies and law firms have sometimes changed with national administrations. Not until its seventh chief executive, Dr. Jesse Werner, was appointed in 1962 did GAF get a career president; Werner, who has a doctorate in chemistry from Columbia, joined GAF as a researcher in 1938. Even though he introduced professionalism to the job, he was hindered because he could make no acquisitions...
Nonetheless, GAF has prospered. From a worth of $45 million when it was seized, the company has raised its assets to about $300 million. Sales for 1964's first nine months were $143.6 million, up $11.4 million over last year, and earnings rose to $7.9 million. GAF has 12 plants scattered from Binghamton, N.Y., to LaHabra, Calif., makes a range of 3,000 products, including Ozalid dry printing machines and the film and camera with which the astronauts took color photographs of space. It also produces synthetic detergents and is the only U.S. company making high pressure acetylene derivatives...
Freed from the status-quo psychology that Government ownership induced, GAF intends to fight for a larger share of the U.S. chemical market. Werner plans to enlarge laboratory facilities and acquire more of the raw-material facilities on which GAF depends for supplies. GAF's future is as unpredictable as its past might have been if it had remained a free agent...