Word: odlum
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Atlas was a $12,000,000 investment trust, big alongside its beginnings, small for the big time. But Odlum scented the end of the boom, sniffed opportunities ahead for anyone able to lay cash on the line for 1929's overvalued securities when the coming depression had undervalued them. In 1930-33, Odlum, with cash in hand, picked up control of enormous pools of capital by paying their hard-hit sponsors a few cents on their lately pyramided dollars. Out of Depression Atlas emerged as No. 1 U. S. investment trust (peak assets...
...Odlum's Meditation: Two months ago Tycoon Odlum went out to the desert ranch which his wife (No. 2), Aviatrix Jacqueline ("Jackie") Cochran, owns at Indio, Calif., 130 miles east of Los Angeles. He had thinking to do. Since end of 1929 U.S. investment trusts have suffered dollar & prestigewise (TIME, March 25). Atlas alone had conspicuously beaten the game. Its asset value per common share had risen from $5.06 to $12.80-153%. It had distributed nearly $60,000,000 of its peak assets, plus around $20,000,000 in dividends. What was left in the kitty was largely profit...
Brooding in California on this rosy picture, Odlum saw a flaw in it. Practically all Atlas' profits had been made on a maximum of $25,000,000 of its capital invested in "special situations" such as the ill-starred Utilities Power & Light system which Bondholder Odlum is now liquidating into its component operating companies. The balance of Atlas' capital has always been "invested" in the market as a whole, has done no better than any other "general portfolio" investment trust...
...Said Odlum to himself: Since I cannot beat the ticker tape with the $37,000,000 I have in the market, why shouldn't I let it go to somebody who has a use for it? Why shouldn't I stick to the $25,000,000 of "special situation" money that I can handle profitably...
Wall Street's first reaction was: Odlum has moved again! Its second: Has he turned away from his old hunting grounds (bankrupt utilities, movie companies, stores), moved into the aircraft business -the field in which Wife No. 2 is interested. Friends of the Curtiss-Wright management offered to raise a pool to defend the company against Odlum's raid. Guy Vaughan, president of Curtiss, cooled them off. He told them the smartest thing he had ever done was to get his friend Floyd Odlum on the Curtiss-Wright board...