Document rBe97voLKqXwNYdkorpvgmn2a

FILE NAME: Crane Company (CRC) DATE: 1959 Dec 6 DOC#: CRC028 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Newspaper Article - New York Times P e r so n a lity : A. S e lf-C o n fid e n t R e o r g a n iz e r Evans Believes Own Thinking Is Best-- and It Has Been Crane Chief Wields Heavy Hatchet on Staff, Outlay jBy ROBERT . BEOWOFTEBb I Thomas Mellon Evans un doubtedly Irritates a great many of his fellow business men. He Is firmly of the opinion that his views on any situation in which he may be Involved are far more farsighted, sensible, feasible, profitable and generally more meritorious than the other fellow's. And, to make this a tti tude even less palatable, so far he has been right. To a person who meets Mr. Evans for the first time and doesn't have to remain in a business relationship with him and watch him be right, he Is a very outgoing and "affable man, who appears to have tremendous vitality. ' At the moment, he is busily rounding out his latest indus tria l rejuvenation, the Crane !Company of Chicago, by setting out to acquire for that company the Briggs Manufacturing Com pany of Warren, Mich. For all his bustling, this is one. time that Mr. Evans, who became chairman of Crane last spring after accumulating 155.000 shares of Crane stock at prices in the thirties--it's now in the sixties--isn't in a great hurry. Bigger Stake Eyed Crane, said to be the nation's largest manufacturer of valves, fittings, fabricated piping and; accessories, also is a leading, producer of plumbing and heat ing appliances. Since September it has acquired 136,000 of Briggs' 1,078,834 shares of com mon stock. I t has paid about $12 a share, which is only slightly below the $12.30 book value on Dec. 31,1958. Mr. Evans is will ing that his company buy all Briggs' assets for the $12,900,000 that this price would call for. Briggs would fit nicely into the Crane setup. Mr. Evans ex plained in a recent interview., It is a leading manufacturer of vitreous china plumbing fixtures and brass plumbing ware fit tings and, in addition to its Wareen plant, near Detroit, It has plants in Cincinnati. Cleve land and Abingdon, 111. ; Crane's pottery manufacture' mg facilities are in Colton, Calif., and Trenton, N. J. Ac quisition of Briggs plants, Mr. Evans notes, would extend his company into the Middle West. `We have the distribution facili ties," he said, "and we think we could save some money with it1 (Briggs). "It is a good name and has lots of fine assets, but it has been run sleepily for a long time. Our interest in it is its plants. We are not planning, any proxy fight for control. Our talks with the company have been friendly. Our only re quest to them is that our pro posal be submitted to Stock holders to vote upon " Mr. Evans is purely a finan cial rnan. As head of Crane he draws no salary and insists that his chief interest is as an investor. "It is the only reason for anyone being on a corporate board," he said. In almost all of his ventures he hires special ists to do specialists' tasks. He has become increasingly disen chanted with one specialist he* hired last year to help him pro tect his interest in Crane, be fore he was a director. This is Alfons Landa, Wash ington, D. C., attorney and an' . old hand at corporate takeovers. Mr. Evans said th at when he retained Mr. Landa, he assisted Mr. Landa in purchasing 10,000 shares of Crane stock. 1 At the stockholders meeting of Crane last April, when Mr. |Evans gained two places on Crane's-board, he took one seat and gave the other to Mr Landa. Mr. Landa, while he has voted at board meetings for most of Mr. Evans' proposals, has been publicly quoted in the press in the Midwest as dis agreeing with some of the un gentle methods that Mr. Evans has used in reorganizing Crane's operations. Cutting a Wide Swath Mr. Evans' streamlining of Crane included the dropping pf vice presidents summarily, in the fashion for which Sewell Avery, former chairman of M ontgom ery W ard & Co , w as noted; retiring a third of Crane's stock, shutting of scores of the company's branches and sales ' offices and slashing inventories drastically. Mr. Evans doesn't hesitate to ipoint to recent published state-# ments attributed to Mr. Landa as the reasons for now consid ering his attorney "disloyal." These statements have included threats of pushing Mr. Evans out of office. As a result, Mr. 'Evans has suggested that Mr. * Landa might well resign his diirectorslup. I Mr. Evans would seem to be in a relatively safe position in making this suggestion. In addi tio n to his own stock holdings, which he has increased by 7,500 'shares since spring to 162,500 shares, he holds an irrevocable proxy for another 110,000 shares owned by Mrs. Emily Crane .Chadbourne, the only living daughter of the founder. This |gives Mr. Evans close to 20 per 'cent control. Meanwhile Crane, under the Evans management, ihas definitely come awake. Dividend Raised The quarterly dividend has been raised from 20 cents to 30 cents a share. Although sales fell by $10,000,000 in the first nine months of this year, oper ating expenses were slashed' $17,000,000. The result was that net income leaped to $4,300,000 from $1,700,000 m 1958, as the company's return on sales after taxes rose to 2.1 from 0.7 per| cent. | At a luncheon with a group; of security analysts the day be-' fore Thanksgiving, Mr. Evans remarked that management "is obligated to show a fair return on assets, or stockholders might as well invest in postal savings." When asked if this meant Crane, . 'might soon be re a liz in g a 5 o r .8 per cent return, Mr. Evans grinned and said; "Let's don't spoil the stock- holders by making them expect too much too soon." Mr. Evans, as his middle name suggests, Is one of the P itts burgh Mellons--although the re lationship is a distant one. While he is a millionaire many times over, his own father and mother were not wealthy. Mr. Evans was born in 1910. He worked his way through Tale, graduating & 1931'after major ing in economics. ' He acknowledges that he started out in the chairman's office and "worked down." His first job was as a clerk a t $100 a month in the office of William L. Mellon, then-head of Gulf Oil Corporation. Mr. Mellon, in ad dition to giving Mr. Evans a job, urged him to try to strike out for himself. This was easier said than done at the time be cause of the deepening depres sion. But Mr. Evans did hit upon a way of gaining business inde pendence. By trading in Gulf stock on borrowed money, he participated fully in the m arket recovery of 1936 and 1937. He used his profits to purchase al 10 cents on the dollar the de faulted bonds of the H. K. Por ter Company of Pittsburgh, a steam'locomotive manufacturer, which had gone bankrupt. Exchange of Securities In the reorganization of Porter, Mr. Evans received stock in exchange for his bonds. His stock holdings were suffi cient for him to get elected president. He was oniy 2D years oolod. In 1939, when he first took office in Porter, the com pany grossed only about $700. 000 a year selling spare parts to former locomotivd customers The company today, with 75 per cent of its stock held by Mr. Evans, through twelve divi sions formed from acquisitions of many old-line concerns makes a broad range of industrial products and in the first nine months this year cleared $5,200,-, 000 on sales of $168,000,000. Mr. Evan;, m addition to being chairman of Crane, also holds that' office m Porter, but doesn't consider himself over worked. "Crane is well on its way, now," he said, "ana after all Porter pretty well takes care of itself." Other than week-end golf and some hunting and fishing, his chief diversion outside of his business life, he said, is travel ing. "I never get to travel enough," he remarked. Mr. Evans has three sons by a first m arriage th at ended in divorce. He and his second wife, the form er Josephine Mitchell, make their home on Round Hill Road in Greenwich. Conn. Sbc iXtUiJJork Simcs Published December 6, 1059 Copyright The New York Times