Unmusical Chairs

The corporate game of musical chairs is played with a vengeance at New York's ailing Fairbanks Whitney Corp.--and the tune that calls the winner often sounds like a dirge. First there was Financier Leopold Silberstein, who began building the company in 1951 with grandiose plans for its future. Then there was Corporate Raider Alfons Landa, who after a proxy battle forced out Silberstein in 1958. Landa brought with him a former publicity man and legman for Drew Pearson named David Karr, who deftly worked his way into the president's chair when Landa vacated it in 1959. Karr then moved himself up to chairman and brought in George A. Strichman from International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. to be president. Last week it was Karr's turn to go. After a bitter attempt to hold on, he was forced to resign by Fairbanks Whitney's board. The new chairman and president: George A. Strichman.

Fairbanks Whitney makes everything from sidearms to diesel engines, and includes among its 14 subsidiaries the well-known machinery maker Fairbanks, Morse. The company ended 1961 with an $83,000 loss on sales of $141 million, and for the first nine months of 1962 was another $1,000,000 in the red. Karr proved ineffective in dealing with the company's problems. He tried to make too many decisions himself, and in the factory he lacked the experience to give Fairbanks Whitney what it really needs: a top-to-bottom overhaul of its inefficient manufacturing and distribution. After he brought in Strichman to run things, he insisted on interfering in operations and finance. Strichman decided that Karr had to go--and so did the board.

A decisive executive, Strichman is expected to reorganize Fairbanks Whitney completely, and to decentralize far more than did Karr. "One man," he says, "simply cannot run a company as widespread as Fairbanks Whitney. We will have to have a period of very tight control, but within 18 months I hope to start delegating as much authority and responsibility as possible." Strichman faces so many problems that without quick successes he might go the way of his predecessors. Already a group of disgruntled stockholders is talking up another proxy fight.

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