Word: smiths
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...cloudier than ever. Originally the trouble began because ITT failed to move fast enough to sell its stock; by 1974 it still held about half of the total. At the request of the Justice Department, a court then named a trustee, a New York lawyer named Richard Joyce Smith, and charged him with the responsibility of selling off the rest of the Avis stock. Smith, now 73, began to sound as attached to the stock as his predecessors; for a time he refused to sell any shares, arguing that the price...
Public Sale. Then, two weeks ago, Smith filed a registration statement for the public sale of about 2 million Avis shares (25% of the total), which have a current market price of about $15 a share. He had already disclosed that he would use all of the 3.7 million shares he controlled to support amendments to the company charter that make tender offers all but impossible. One proposal would allow anyone holding more than 20% of Avis stock to veto a takeover. Even after the sale of the 2 million shares, Smith will hold 22% of the stock...
Fuqua Industries, an Atlanta-based conglomerate, offered to pay no less than $15.50 each for all of the Avis shares held by Smith, and agreed to make an equal or even better offer for the remainder of the stock held by the public. The Justice Department eagerly let it be known that it favored complete divestiture of the shares by the trustee as quickly as possible...
...Smith rejected the Fuqua offer, arguing that stockholders would best be served by selling the shares from time to time on the public market. Indeed some Wall Street analysts agree that Fuqua's bid is low in view of Avis' strong earnings. Last year its profits climbed 55% over those of 1975, to $16.4 million, and earnings are expected to be at least as strong this year...
Fuqua executives and some Avis shareholders implied that Smith does not want to sell because of the fees he derives from the trusteeship. Over the past two years, they note, Smith has received fees of $100,000 from ITT. His law firm got $220,000 from ITT for various services involving Avis. In addition, Smith and one of his law partners have also been paid retainers of $6,000 a year as Avis directors, plus expenses for them and their wives to travel to meetings in Europe. Fuqua contends that Avis, the only major car-rental firm that...