Word: booth
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According to the victims, state authorities might have stopped the bogus deals long ago. In April 1974, Richard Booth, then an assistant state attorney general, outlined the schemes to four state law-enforcement officials and warned that they could result in "the loss of millions of dollars to many innocent parties." Little action was taken on the warning. Instead, complaints appear to have been bucked from one state agency to another, while each tried to determine if it had jurisdiction. Last week State Representative H. Paul Nuckolls called for a legislative investigation of the "coverup" by agencies...
Second Wooing. But after seven years with Rockwell, Booth, 52, was at a crossroads. He had resigned as a senior vice president, director and member of the executive committee at Rockwell, where the chief executive was only two years older than he. "I didn't see a clear path to the top," Booth says. So when United Brands asked him a second time to head the company, he agreed, and last week was elected president...
...Booth steps into one of the hottest spots in U.S. business. United Brands lost $47 million in 1974 (on sales of more than $2 billion), as both of its main businesses-John Morrell & Co., a meatpacking firm, and Chiquita bananas -turned down. The losses were caused chiefly by Hurricane Fifi, which destroyed 70% of United Brands' banana crops in Honduras, and a sharp rise in the cost of cattle feed...
Boardroom Detente. At length Gelsthorpe concluded that to stop the quarreling "it was imperative that this company bring in somebody not in any way involved in the events of the past months." His opponents agreed, and the board united to choose Booth and Detroit Investor Max M. Fisher, one of United Brands' biggest stockholders, who becomes acting chairman. In private, each faction still disparages the other; yet the rivals are at the same time happy with Booth's selection, because it means that neither side...
...Booth's first task will obviously be to stop the feuding, and it will test the decisiveness that has earned him a reputation for sometimes being abrupt and abrasive. "I could settle something with him in ten or 15 minutes that would take three hours with almost anyone else," recalls a former colleague, "but I never went to him with a half-formed idea." Beyond knocking heads together, Booth faces a formidable array of challenges. The company is negotiating to sell off all its holdings in Panama; the discussions were interrupted by the bribery scandal. In connection with...