Word: pharaonically
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Dates: during 1978-1978
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Saudi Arabia's production of mysterious millionaires is almost as impressive as its output of oil-and now one of those little-known Saudis has volunteered to start digging Bert Lance out from under his mountain of debts. Ghaith Pharaon, 37, has offered to buy 60% of the stock in Lance's National Bank of Georgia for $20 a share, or about $4 above market value. Whether other stockholders accept or not, Lance will turn over 60% of his 200,000-odd shares to Pharaon and get a check for about $2.4 million...
...Pharaon willing to pay so much for control of a bank that is running in the red, has suspended dividends, and saw the price of its stock sink as low as $8.50 a share before the cash-laden Saudi stepped in? Last week Pharaon met with reporters in Atlanta and brushed aside suggestions that he was trying to win favor with President Carter, who reluctantly last September accepted the resignation of his friend Lance as budget boss. Said Pharaon airily: "Why should I buy influence? If I ever wanted to meet the President, we have ways of meeting him through...
...Instead, Pharaon presented the transaction as a straight business deal. U.S. banks, he believes, are ideal investments for an absentee owner. "They are very highly regulated and restricted," says Pharaon, and can safely be left to the management of others. The National Bank of Georgia, he asserts, has intrinsic values, like a location in a prime growth area. Moreover, he sees bright days ahead once various federal investigations are concluded. "It is a turnaround situation that comes very quickly and very fast," says Pharaon. "In fact, we foresee in 1978 that the bank will be very handsomely in the black...
Judging by his past record, that bullish view may be a trifle myopic. In 1975 Pharaon bought control of Detroit's Bank of the Commonwealth, a rickety go-go institution that had been saved from bankruptcy only by the intervention of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Despite much talk of expansion, Pharaon in 1976 sold his interest in that bank to a Paris-based company. Nonetheless, he professes great faith in the U.S. banking business. Last September he bought 20% of Houston's Main Bank, in which former Treasury Secretary John Connally is a stockholder...
...first glance, Pharaon's soft features, barely disguised by a mustache and a tiny Vandyke, suggest that he is something of a sybarite. He travels by private jet, owns a chateau in France and once, rumor has it, dispatched a ship to Italy to pick up a pair of porcelain vases. Moreover, his tendency to leave many major decisions to others, combined with a rather offhand manner when discussing business and money, can sometimes leave the impression that he is a self-indulgent hobbyist rather than a hardened executive...