Change at Fairbanks Whitney

For the past four months, U.S. business has known no more indefatigable head-hunter than David Karr, 44, onetime legman for Drew Pearson and then a public-relations man before he maneuvered himself into the corporate big time as guiding spirit of New York's Fairbanks Whitney Corp. Last week, after interviewing more than 40 senior executives from every corner of the nation, Karr ended his talent quest. In as Fairbanks Whitney's new president and chief executive officer (at $115,000 a year) goes crew-cut George A. Strichman, 46, once director of manufacturing services for Raytheon Corp. and until last week president of the Kellogg division of the International Telephone & Telegraph Corp.

Rarely has a corporation needed someone to run it and pull it together more than Fairbanks Whitney, a sprawling manufacturing complex that produces everything from industrial scales to Colt revolvers. The company was assembled eight years ago under the name Penn-Texas Corp. by German-born Financier Leopold Silberstein, who hoped to make it the nucleus of a vast industrial empire. But in 1958 it was wrested from Silberstein's control by a corporate raider from Palm Beach named Alfons Landa. Landa used the company to seize control of Chicago's Fairbanks Morse, an old-line machinery manufacturer, then changed its name to Fairbanks Whitney.

Board-Room Battlefield. By installing himself as chairman of the executive committee, and his protege Karr as president, Landa thought he had assured himself of control of Fairbanks Whitney. But before long, the new board of directors began raising a hue and cry about mismanagement. Last May, after a 1961 loss of $83,600 on sales of $141 million, Landa resigned as an officer of the company. Subsequently, a score of lesser Fairbanks executives scurried off, and those who remained behind were so absorbed in boardroom battles that no one was left to mind the store.

Although the company showed a precarious profit in the first half of this year, its largest division, Fairbanks Morse, has stuck stubbornly in the red. And small wonder. Even in its most up-to-date plant, Fairbanks Morse works with machine tools 22 years old, and its warehouses still use rope-rigged elevators pulled by hand. Karr, who will step up to chairman of the company, says: "We were well aware of the need to bring in a capable manufacturing man."

Call for an Encore. Strichman seems just such a man. When he took command at Kellogg in 1959, the telephone-equipment manufacturer was losing some $4,200,000 on sales of $45 million. Strichman launched a modernization program that has already added three new plants and aims to have the existing ones made over by the end of 1963. This year Kellogg expects to show a $2,000,000 profit on sales of nearly $120 million. Strichman hopes to repeat the performance at Fairbanks, but, well briefed on the company's recent past, promises only: "I'll do the best I know how."

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