Word: sigoloff
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Make a bid, get rejected, collect millions. The strategy can work wonders. Less than two years ago, Santa Monica, Calif.-based Wickes Cos., a home- improvement and consumer-products firm, emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and launched a series of takeover bids. Last week Chairman Sanford Sigoloff announced Wickes' latest coup: a $30 million profit on the sale of stock and options it accumulated in a $2.2 billion takeover try for Toledo- based Owens-Corning Fiberglas...
...April, Wickes picked up $3 million when it was rebuffed by Dallas-based National Gypsum. Wickes also wins by winning. The company has successfully acquired three small firms this year, including the Homecrafters Warehouse chain. Says Sigoloff, who now has $1.5 billion in spending money: "You'll be hearing from us again...
...company's comeback is the work of Chairman Sanford Sigoloff, who has made a career of saving ailing firms through tough cost-cutting moves that have won him a nickname taken from the Flash Gordon comic strip: Ming the Merciless. When Sigoloff came to Wickes in 1982, he closed down several unprofitable divisions. After losses in 1982 and 1983 totaling $507 million, the company had net income of $296 million in its last fiscal year. To bankroll the Gulf & Western deal, Wickes has been issuing new stock and securities. About $500 million is in hand, and Sigoloff anticipates no trouble...
Like other heads of revitalized companies, Sigoloff is nervous about the future. "We have put a Band-Aid on," he says. "But all of a sudden, if the economy stumbles, the customers may disappear...
...though, so good. Sigoloffs goal was to pay off the company's $1.6 billion debt by the third anniversary of the bankruptcy filing, or April 1985. He may beat that deadline handily. Wickes directors last month announced that an agreement to pay back creditors had been reached; the company is expected to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of the year. Said Sigoloff, now riding annual sales of $3 billion from a leaner Wickes, which focuses mainly on the home-improvement market: "Considering the size of the case and the complexity, it's probably a world...