Word: tlc
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Last week that career change paid off in a spectacular fashion. Lewis struck a single deal that will transform his investment firm, TLC Group, into the largest black-owned business in the U.S. Beating out such rival bidders as Citicorp, Pillsbury and Shearson Lehman Bros., Manhattan-based TLC (stands for "The Lewis Company") signed an agreement to make a $985 million acquisition of Beatrice's International Food division, a profitable hodgepodge of 64 companies in 31 countries that manufacture everything from ice cream to sausages...
...transaction was a big-league leveraged buyout, the increasingly popular type of acquisition financed largely through borrowed funds. In this case, Lewis got the money from the high-rolling Drexel Burnham Lambert investment firm. When the takeover is completed, TLC is expected to rake in $2 billion in annual revenues -- far more than the $173.5 million reported last year by Johnson Publishing (Ebony magazine), which topped Black Enterprise magazine's list of the largest black-owned companies. Says Lewis of his new stature: "I like to stretch myself. I like to face challenges...
Lewis first got Wall Street's attention in 1984, when TLC snapped up Manhattan's McCall Pattern Co. with only $1 million in cash and $24 million in borrowed funds. He immediately set out to revitalize the 117-year-old sewing- pattern company. "We emphasized quality, cost containment and cash flow, and we made money," says Lewis. Indeed, McCall's earnings more than doubled last year, to $4.9 million. In July Lewis dazzled the financial community by selling McCall to the John Crowther Group, a British textilemaker. The buyer paid $63 million and agreed to assume $32 million in debts...
...TLC chairman feels uncomfortable with being portrayed as a pinstripe Jackie Robinson. Says Lewis: "It is wrong to focus on being the first black to do something." He and his three brothers and two sisters were raised in a middle-class household in Baltimore, where Lewis attended a Roman Catholic elementary school and then became a star quarterback at Dunbar High School. "He put a lot of time into his studies. He didn't goof off," says his mother, Carolyn Fugett, who divorced his father and married Jean Fugett, an elementary school teacher, when Lewis was nine years old. Though...
...feel awful! Can I stay home from school?" In the old days, mothers could indulge plaints of colds and other minor ills with plenty of chicken soup and tlc. But in an era of two-income families, few parents can afford to skip work every time Junior comes down with a real or imaginary malady. This dilemma has spawned a new type of day-care facility for children with mild illnesses. More than three dozen of these so-called sniffle centers have opened for business around the U.S., often bearing names right out of A.A. Milne, like Wheezles and Sneezles...