Word: kennecott
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...struck that bargain was Kennecott's new chairman, Thomas Barrow, 56, who had recently left a $250,000-a-year job as a senior vice president at Exxon. The 6-ft. 3½-in. onetime University of Texas football player is the son of a former chairman of Humble Oil & Refining, one of Exxon's predecessor companies, and the heir to the 30,000-acre Thomson Ranch near San Antonio. Having reportedly been passed over for the presidency of Exxon, Barrow was on his way back home to manage his ranch when Kennecott snared him with a Texas...
Right from the start, however, there was trouble in the Kennecott boardroom. Berner objected that Barrow was "vastly overpaid" and forced the board to renegotiate the contract, which he said could have paid the chairman $27 million over five years. Berner also took exception to other perks, like a $5 million corporate jet for Barrow's personal use. Says a Curtiss-Wright insider of those board meetings: "Ted was the skunk at the picnic...
During the fall of 1980, Berner, who by then controlled 14.3% of Kennecott's stock, announced plans to increase Curtiss-Wright's holdings to 25%. Kennecott board members began fearing that he would start another fight for control of the company as soon as the cease-fire expired in May. Barrow, therefore, huddled with some of Kennecott's directors last November and then announced a pre emptive strike: Kennecott was going to take over Curtiss-Wright. Said one Wall Street source: "The apple had bitten the worm." The copper company offered Curtiss-Wright owners $40 a share...
Berner nonetheless tried to fight off the Kennecott attack. Curtiss-Wright announced that it would buy back 1 million of its own shares at $44, and the price was soon raised to $46. That was $6 a share more than Kennecott offered. But the copper company, unable to attract enough Curtiss-Wright shares at $40, ended its offer and started negotiating with
Teledyne, Inc., which has a large stockholding in Curtiss-Wright, to acquire its shares. After Teledyne failed to respond to an offer of $50 a share, Kennecott two weeks ago began buying Curtiss-Wright stock in the open market. It soon became the company's largest shareholder, with 32% of the firm's stock...