Switcheroo

In a corporate merger, it is usually the big company that buys a smaller one. Last week Boston's up & coming Tracerlab, Inc. pulled a switcheroo. Tracerlab, which grossed only $1,700,000 last year, bought the much bigger ($8,000,000 gross) Kelley-Koett Mfg. Co. of Covington, Ky., one of the oldest and biggest U.S. X-ray equipment manufacturers.

Founded five years ago by some young, M.I.T.-trained scientists on a $31,000 shoestring, Tracerlab was the first U.S. company to grow out of atomic energy (TIME, Sept. 12, 1949). It built a thriving business selling radioactive isotopes to hospitals, has big Government orders for devices to measure radioactivity (e.g.t the $49.50 fist-sized Radiac).

With sales estimated at $5,000,000 this year, Tracerlab felt able to pay $750,000 to buy control of Kelley-Koett from

Owner Phillip Meyers, president of Cincinnati's Fashion Frocks, Inc., and take on Kelley-Koett's $1,500,000 debt. Millionaire Meyers, who bought the company nine years ago, was willing to sell it because he lacked the technical know-how to put it on its feet; it lost money in 1949, made only $56,000 last year. Tracer-lab thought it could do better than that.

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