Word: gramco
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...Resources sold interests in oil wells and other holes in the ground, tried to come to Cornfeld's rescue with a loan. Instead, King himself was caught in a money bind and ousted by his board. Keith Barish, 26, a financial whiz who had made Nassau's Gramco Management Ltd. the second-ranking offshore mutual fund complex, was also hit by a wave of fund redemptions that forced him to suspend some operations. Several big-thinking Texans were deflated. James Ling, whose merger magic had expanded a tiny electrical firm into a $3.75 billion conglomerate, Ling-Temco-Vought...
Irresistible Lure. Gramco's leaders have impressive backgrounds. Keith Barish, 26, chairman of the top holding company, is a onetime White House intern who conceived the idea for the fund and has made millions from the venture. Rafael G. Navarro, 34, Gramco's president, is a wealthy Cuban refugee who was a diplomat in pre-Castro days. And then there is the portly Salinger, 45, the former White House press secretary; he serves as a Gramco director, spokesman, supersalesman and deputy chairman of the British unit...
Under them, Gramco had an irresistible lure for foreign investors who are suspicious of stocks, bonds and other paper assets. Unlike most mutual funds, Gramco's USIF invested not in securities but in solid U.S. real estate. Colorful brochures showed some of the 214 properties that prospective investors would be able to buy into through the fund. Among Gramco's holdings: the 32-story LTV Tower in Dallas, the Northeast Airlines Building in Miami, an industrial park in Phoenix and apartment complexes and shopping centers in 17 states. The fund valued its holdings at $758 million, but that...
Burgers and Scotch. Troubles began piling up for Gramco soon after upheavals in Cornfeld's I.O.S. shook investor confidence in American-run investment plans in Europe. Last month redemptions began to climb alarmingly after West Germany's Federal Credit Supervisory Board abruptly banned sales of Gramco's USIF. The board acted on the disputed grounds that the fund failed to comply with some complex provisions of a new German securities law. In the last five weeks, the owners of more than $40 million worth of shares asked for their money back. But real estate...
Hastily summoned to Nassau last week, Gramco's directors assembled in marathon meetings, occasionally sending out for hamburgers and Chivas Regal. Meantime, employees at Gramco's mock colonial headquarters fended off a flood of transocean phone calls from anxious shareholders in many far-off countries. Emerging from one meeting, Vice President Joseph Jordan delivered a pep talk to worried USIF salesmen. "We are solvent," he said. "If we have to, we'll clear the deck-tighten our belts, cut officers' salaries, drop employees. I get nothing. The shareholders will get paid." That, of course, remains...