Occidental's Finance Man

During his tenure as managing director of the Western American Bank in London, Joseph E. Baird has been, in the words of one high officer of an international corporation, "an innovator with a lot of nerve," who made some investments and loans "that a conservative banker would not have got into." He also made loans to Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles, and he caught the sharp eye of Occidental's chairman, Armand Hammer. Still active at 75, Hammer has announced that 39-year-old Baird will become the president, chief operating officer and No. 2 man in the company.

Occidental has since last year been making profits again after falling $67 million into the red in 1971. But it has a long-term debt of close to $1 billion and thus has had some difficulty raising capital for Hammer's favorite overseas projects, which include drilling in the North Sea and a multibillion-dollar plan to import natural gas from Siberia. Baird's banking experience may be just what Occidental needs to reduce its debt and to gain, as he puts it, "a better-balanced capital structure."

A Yale graduate, Baird worked at Chase Manhattan and Smith Barney & Co., an investment banking firm. He became general manager of Western American in 1967 when it was formed by four banks, each representing a separate world market area, and soon built its assets from $8.4 million to $ 1.6 billion. If Baird can duplicate that remarkable financial performance at Occidental, he should become a prime candidate eventually to succeed Hammer. But for the present, as one financier close to Occidental puts it, Hammer "hasn't the slightest intention of relinquishing control to Baird. He will rely on him as a good financial man, and that's about it."

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