Word: p
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...last week, as some 500 of the company's 52,000 bewildered stockholders gathered for their annual meeting in Manhattan, A. & P. was in a first-rate tempest. With their stock crushed down from its 1961 peak of $70 (it closed last week at $26.75), A. & P. shareholders have long been restless over the company's declining (now 18%) share of grocery-chain sales. Last year its profit of $56 million (on sales of $5.4 billion) was off a bit from the previous year, despite Jay's robust prediction that earnings would be "running at a record...
...credibility gap was hardly improved when Chairman Melvin W. Alldredge insisted that the absent Jay had retired merely "because of personal reasons." With "such an aura of mystery," complained one disbelieving stockholder, "it must have been something fairly drastic." There were some rather drastic statistics to consider. During A. &P.'s first 1968 quarter, which closed just seven days before Jay exited, profits plummeted 21 % below the 1967 first quarter. Moreover, Alldredge conceded, there was no sign of "any significant change" ahead...
...P. stockholders had looked for quite a bit of change from Jay himself. A spare, cigar-smoking salesman, Jay took over an ailing company whose aging management-the three previous chiefs were 67, 68 and 66 when they took over-was losing ground to smaller chains. Jay moved A. & P. into long-term leases in suburban shopping centers and launched a sizable renovation and new construction program; he also tried to cut commodity costs with such facilities as the company's own recently opened, $25 million food-processing center in Horseheads...
Costly Distinction. Such steps have yet to fatten A. &P.'s slim profit margin, which, at 1% of sales, is far narrower than the 1.5% achieved by Safeway, the second-biggest chain. Many stockholders, particularly heirs of Founder George Huntington Hartford, who started the chain 109 years ago, place much of the blame on a foundation set up by Hartford's sons, John A. and George L. Hartford, which holds the biggest single block (34%) of A. & P. stock. They maintain that the management-dominated foundation (eight of ten trustees are present or past A. & P. executives...
...annual meeting, Chairman Alldredge snapped that such allegations are simply "not true." Relatively youthful (56) in A. & P. terms, Alldredge came up through storeside ranks, was named president in 1963, became chairman in 1966, and two weeks ago was given Jay's key title of chief executive officer. Parading a new management team, including fledgling President William J. Kane, 55, Alldredge promised "a fresh start" for A. & P...