Kaiser's Spreading Empire

California's Edgar Kaiser, 56, is an uncommonly sentimental tycoon. Whenever he sees his father, the legendary Henry J. Kaiser, 82, he greets the old man with a warm hug and a kiss. Two weeks ago, when Edgar was decorated with Brazil's Order of the Southern Cross, the tears flowed freely down his cheeks. On business matters, however, Edgar Kaiser is eminently dry-eyed. Finally stepping out of his father's long shadow, he has taken full charge of the family's 100-company empire and spread the business into 40 countries on six continents. Last week, as the last of their major companies reported for 1964, the Kaisers toted up profits of $46 million on sales of $1.3 billion. For their major manufacturing arms, it was the brightest year since Henry J. started making steel, building ships and breaking production records in 1941.

Rising on Risks. Next week Edgar Kaiser will jet from his headquarters in Oakland, Calif., to Venezuela, where Kaiser engineers head a consortium of companies from five nations that is building the $137 million Guri Dam. Meanwhile, Kaiser Aluminum is busy putting up new plants in West Berlin, Turkey and Japan. Kaiser Steel has just closed the largest trade deal in Australia's history: with a local partner, it will sell $600 million worth of iron ore to Japan over the next 15 years. Kaiser Cement & Gypsum this month opened a mill in Florida, and later this year will start up another in New Jersey, thus invading the eastern U.S. market.

Like his father, Edgar rushes in where the timid fear to tread, following the company's slogan--"Find a need, and fill it." Optimism is the cornerstone of the Kaiser philosophy, and Edgar argues with folksy persuasion that the world's needs are bound to rise so fast that he would be foolish not to try to meet them.

Such a philosophy obviously has built-in risks. Kaiser has taken on an extraordinarily heavy debt load, which both limits the payment of cash dividends and makes the company vulnerable to any severe recession in the future. Last year his engineers lost $16 million, largely because a Kaiser dam in Greece was washed out by floods. A dike-building project in Israel was damaged when the Dead Sea overflowed--for the first time since the days of Moses. Other businessmen often wonder why Kaiser is deeply committed in such unpredictable areas as Latin America (where Kaiser-Willys is the continent's biggest auto producer), or India (where Kaiser operates the country's largest aluminum plant), or Ghana (where Kaiser is building the $196 million Volta Dam and an aluminum plant that will be served by it). To such questioning, Edgar gives a disarming answer: "How are you ever going to give these people the opportunity to know us unless you work with them?"

Prince & Papa. Edgar travels the equivalent of ten times around the world every year, catches up on sleep by snapping on a black eyeshade and stretching out on a bunk in the company plane. A confidant and partygoing pal of several world leaders, he has become the U.S.'s semi-official ambassador to Ghana's Red-leaning dictator, Kwame Nkrumah. He also finds time to serve on three U.S. presidential commissions and to supervise the nonprofit Kaiser Foundation Medical Plan, in which 1,200,000 members pay a monthly fee for the services of 1,000 doctors and 15 hospitals. Edgar used it to treat his ulcers, now cured.

Part of this four-wheeled drive comes from his desire to top Henry J. Says Edgar: "Any time that you follow a great man--and my father was a great man--you're constantly asking yourself, 'Do I measure up?' " Aging Henry J. now lives under the Honolulu sun, devotes much of his energies to the company's 6,000-acre Hawaii Kai real estate development, into which the Kaiser enterprises have sunk more than $25 million with little return. Edgar invariably sounds Henry J. out on all major decisions, and for more than sentimental reasons. After all, Edgar has three sons of his own--age 16 to 22--and he expects to be listened to when they take over.

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