Word: bierwirth
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Before going far into new fields, however, Bierwirth found that...
Wine & White Rock. Though he is a banker by trade. Yaleman Bierwirth, 58, has amazed the liquor industry by his daring. A first lieutenant in World War I, he spent ten years with a contracting firm before joining the New York Trust Co. as a vice president in 1929. He was made president in 1941. Four years ago, when National Distillers' longtime boss, Seton Porter, was looking around for a successor, Bierwirth took the $150,000 job on one condition: that National would go heavily into chemicals, which he considered the most promising field in industry...
National out of some unproductive old lines. One such was the White Rock Corp., another was Italian Swiss Colony Wine Co. (TIME, April 27); a third was Henry H. Shufeldt & Co., which processed glace fruits as well as maraschino cherries and olives for dunking in National's liquor. Bierwirth sold them and all the rest, realizing $3,000,000 over their book value...
...Money." National's first big move into chemicals was to build an $11.5 million plant for producing metallic sodium and chlorine at Ashtabula, Ohio; with sales of $8,500,000 a year, it now has the highest profit margin of any National division. Next, Bierwirth paid $6,700,000 for a 25% interest in U.S. Industrial Chemicals, Inc. (industrial alcohol, antifreeze, resins, etc.), has since merged the company with National. He then bought a 20% interest in Intermountain Chemical Corp. (soda ash), and for $4,500.000 bought Algonquin Chemical Co., Inc. (caustic soda, sulphuric acid, chlorine...
...Bierwirth asked Vice President Robert E. Hulse, National's chemical chief: "If you had money and wanted to go into the chemical business, which branch of it would you pick?" When Hulse answered "petrochemicals," Bierwirth went upstairs from his Manhattan office at 120 Broadway to see an old friend, William G. Maguire, chairman of Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co. Within half an hour they made a deal to set up a jointly owned company. National Petro-Chemicals Corp. They picked Tuscola, Ill. as the plant site because it is a key junction of Panhandle Eastern's pipe lines...