DONALD CLINTON POWER

Professor of Telephony

Few men have bridged the gap between classroom theory and the hard realities of the business world with greater success than Donald Clinton Power, chairman and chief executive of General Telephone & Electronics Corp., the largest U.S. independent telephone system. An ex-professor of economics, hefty (5 ft. 10 1/2 in., 194 Ibs.), round-faced Don Power, 60, stepped fresh into corporate management only nine years ago. Yet he has transformed a loose confederation of small telephone companies into a giant communications and manufacturing complex of 80,000 employees that serves more than 4,000,000 customers in rural and suburban U.S., where front-running Bell System does not reach, sells equipment to 4,000 other independent phone companies. Last week General Telephone got its 1959 report card--and for the first time made the honor roll of billion-dollar corporations. Sales and revenues rose to $1.1 billion, almost double 1958's total, and earnings reached a record $3.40 a share.

Don Power runs General Telephone as quietly and efficiently as a college classroom. He issues few memos, calls few meetings, likes to keep 9-to-5 hours so that he can spend time with his wife (they have two daughters) in their Manhattan apartment. He pores over every fact and facet of a business deal logically and dispassionately, then makes decisions about a $1,000,000 or a $100 million outlay with equal calm. He permits his subordinates wide latitude in running their departments, gives them pep talks in the "go-out-and-win" manner of a football coach. Said he recently to the newly promoted boss of an area: "I want only three things: high morale, good earnings and good public relations. If you achieve these, you don't have to bother to send me any other reports."

A graduate of Ohio State ('22), Power went on for degrees in law and economics. He taught economics at the university, and at the same time practiced with the law firm of ex-Senator John Bricker, ran three of his campaigns. Power so impressed a small, ailing holding company called Associated Telephone Utilities, when he won a rate case for a subsidiary, that A.T.U., later reorganized as General Telephone, invited him to take over all its Ohio rate cases. By 1946 he was handling all General's U.S. rate cases. When President Harold V. Bozell retired in 1951, Power took over.

Power had a mental blueprint all ready for General Telephone's expansion. To escape the long shadow of Mother Bell he set up a central advertising and public relations department to sharpen the company's independent identity, prefixed the title "General Telephone" to each of General's 30 domestic and five foreign subsidiaries. As the company became better known--it serves such important cities as Long Beach, Calif., Erie, Pa., Fort Wayne, Ind. and Lexington, Ky.--he used its growing reputation to raise capital needed for growth, has raised more than $1 billion.

POWER used the money to acquire small independents that could not keep up to the growing demands of burgeoning suburbia, which the Bell System had to forgo for antitrust reasons. He also set out to fill what he considered General's two biggest needs: manufacturing and research facilities similar to Bell's. In 1955 he bought Theodore Gary & Co., a large Midwestern independent that owned Automatic Electric Co., a major supplier of telephone equipment. General Telephone thus became not only its own equipment supplier, but a supplier for 4,000 independents to which Bell did not sell.

In 1958 Power pulled his biggest coup by arranging a merger with Sylvania Electric Products Inc. Sylvania's stock had a higher book value than General's, but Power picked it up in a bargain share-for-share trade, took over the helm of the merged companies. The acquisition not only gave General Telephone the scientists and engineers (3,000) that it needed for basic research, but a big manufacturing business.

Power has set up General Telephone for the communications revolution of the future. It is working on outer space research, techniques for using telephony in transmitting business data, electronic brains to direct a nationwide telephone system. It still uses the Bell System's long distance lines to link its subsidiaries, but Don Power has rid the company of its inferiority complex. Since he took over, the company's total assets have increased fivefold, its sales and revenue twelvefold. This year General plans to spend a record $275 million in capital investment, will soon float new stock, its biggest financing ever, to raise the cash. Most pleasing of all, General's yearly growth rate is 6.5%--higher than massive Mother Bell's.

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