Word: landa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even wily Proxy Fighter Alfons Landa, executive committee chairman of Fairbanks Whitney Corp., who helped Evans gain his place on the Crane board, was taken aback by Evans' maneuvers, questioned whether he was housecleaning too fast and hard. But Evans, who built Pittsburgh's H. K. Porter Co. from a money-losing locomotive manufacturer to a twelve-division, $137 million industrial combine, would hear none of it. Shuffling between his Greenwich, Conn, home and several cities, he worked harder and more ruthlessly to increase profits for Crane and solidify his power. Evans shifted about Crane's operations...
...Evans' aggressiveness has paid off. Crane's net income in the first half rose more than 60%, to $2,333,000. Just how much farther Evans will go toward reducing the size of Crane is a matter of wide speculation. His rift with Landa over how to run the company appears healed. If he can overcome the ill will he has generated through the drastic changes in Crane's organization, roughriding Tom Evans may well add Crane to the list of his successes...
...from a record $394 million in 1956 to $378 million. He began buying up stock, asked to get on the Crane board, but was turned down. As Crane sales dropped to $336 million in 1958, Evans decided that the time was ripe to move, called in Proxy-Battler Alfons Landa, boss of Penn-Texas Corp., to help...
Stock Control. Hoping to avoid a proxy fight, Evans and Landa persuaded Gurdon Wattles, chairman of Electric Auto-Lite Co. and a Crane director, to back them with 322,900 shares of Crane stock owned by Auto-Lite. They also went to Mrs. Emily Crane Chadbourne, 89, only living daughter of Crane's founder, explained that Evans' chief argument with Crane President Neele E. Stearns was over Stearns's slowness in expanding the firm's inadequate network of independent wholesalers. Proof of Evans' complaint was Crane's first-quarter earnings (23? per share...
Meantime, Evans himself had continued buying Crane stock until he had amassed 155,000 shares. This, together with the Wattles and Chadbourne shares, gave him 25% of Crane's stock, enough to do what he wanted. Evans and Landa placed four new directors on the board, and Stearns resigned when he saw his power drained away by the insurgents...