**OT** Trufflette WMX (sorry IOM'ers, wish there was an SI way to send an off topic message to a person...next release?)
Rumor started on 12/19/97...heres a WSJ story from the 22nd...sorry coudn't find any links...
WSJ: When 'Chainsaw Al' Puts Pen To Paper
By Jeff Bailey and Greg Jaffe
Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal
At a time of year when chief executives issue holiday thanks and greetings, Sunbeam Corp. leader Albert J. Dunlap sat down Thursday to compose tidings of a different sort. He wrote about a recent encounter with Robert S. "Steve" Miller, who like Mr. Dunlap is a corporate-turnaround specialist.
"I found him to be a typical, arrogant professional director playing at being an executive," Mr. Dunlap wrote. "I could never work for a company that had Mr. Miller as a director."
Mr. Dunlap dispatched these and other insults in an all-points press release.
The outburst arose from a flirtation of sorts. As a director and acting chief executive of Waste Management Inc., Mr. Miller is charged with finding a permanent leader. Waste Management, based in Oak Brook, Ill., is on its fourth chief executive this year, and that is just the beginning of its troubles. The big trash hauler's earnings are depressed, and its operations inefficient.
Why not Mr. Dunlap? The architect of two remarkable corporate turnarounds, Mr. Dunlap recently indicated that his latest effort --
Sunbeam -- was nearly complete and that he might be available for a new challenge.
A meeting took place. Who called it? Who expressed more interest in whom? These questions became relevant when, last week, analyst Michael E. Hoffman of Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. reiterated a "strong buy" report on Waste Management in which he said that Mr. Miller had told him: "Mr. Dunlap is campaigning for the [Waste Management CEO] job."
Rather than move Waste Management's stock, this report sent Sunbeam's stock tumbling Thursday as investors worried that the 60-year-old Mr. Dunlap would soon depart. It also sent Mr. Dunlap, known as "Chainsaw Al" for his aggressive downsizing of companies, to his desk to write a press release.
In the release, which Sunbeam issued Friday morning, Mr. Dunlap denied "pursuing, or having any interest in, the position of CEO at" Waste Management.
He continued: "As a courtesy to several large shareholders of [Waste Management], some of whom are investors in Sunbeam, I agreed to meet several weeks ago with Steve Miller at my home in Florida to give him some ideas on how to improve [Waste Management]. Mr. Miller flew in to see me at their insistence, and it was obvious that he really had no desire to listen to anything I had to say."
Mr. Dunlap went on: "I can only conclude that he and others are attempting to trade on my name in order to prop up their sagging stock."
Lest anyone still think of him as interested, he said, "I clearly am the CEO that [Waste Management] needs; however, with their current board culture and the attitude of Mr. Miller and others like him, I wouldn't consider heading that company."
To end, he noted that the last CEO Waste Management recruited, Sprint Corp. President Ronald T. LeMay, bolted back to Sprint after only three months. "What a mess!" Mr. Dunlap said.
And then, suffering from the flu and calling himself "extremely agitated," Mr. Dunlap went home to bed. In an interview, Mr. Dunlap says that he stands by his words and that he regrets only that he "ever had to come out with this statement in the first place."
How does Mr. Miller respond to it all? He concedes that the analyst's information came from him. "I did say I thought Al was campaigning for the job," he says.
That was based, he says, not on a direct remark from Mr. Dunlap, but on Mr. Dunlap's apparent interest in and knowledge of Waste Management; and on the outspoken backing Mr. Dunlap was receiving from some Waste Management investors. "Al's release says he isn't campaigning. I therefore retract what I said," Mr. Miller says. "I shouldn't have said it."
The ferocity of Mr. Dunlap's press release may have been rooted in remarks Mr. Miller made even before their meeting. When Mr. Miller took charge of Waste Management in October, he made it clear that he didn't want the job permanently because he prefers temporary stints. But in a message to Waste Management's 58,000 employees, Mr. Miller assured them that in his search for a permanent CEO, "I would not support a Chainsaw Al. This is a great asset. We're not going to rip the place apart and destroy things."
Mr. Dunlap, in the interview, says he was furious that "Miller kept using my name to hype his stock. At the same time, he was saying 'We don't need a slash-and burn type like Dunlap.' "
Why did Mr. Miller, who counts among his greatest achievements saving Chrysler Corp. jobs when the auto maker skirted bankruptcy in 1980, change his mind and decide to approach Mr. Dunlap? After all, Mr. Dunlap's book, "Mean Business," glories in the roughly 17,000 jobs he cut in total at Scott Paper Co. and Sunbeam.
Mr. Miller, 56, says, "I was criticizing the concept of a Chainsaw Al" to the workers. "He is a symbol of bust up, sell off." But then, Mr. Miller says, investors told him, " 'Hey, wait a minute, you never met the guy.' "
Financier George Soros, who controls about 5% of Waste Management's stock, was among those asking Mr. Miller to talk to Mr. Dunlap, according to the Sunbeam chief's press aide, Nicole Reilly. "The only reason [Mr. Dunlap] met with the guy was out of respect for Soros," Ms. Reilly says.
A Soros spokesman, however, says, "It's not us who pushed for a meeting. We're not prepared to champion Al Dunlap as CEO." The spokesman says Mr. Soros merely went along with another investor's suggestion that Mr. Miller talk to Mr. Dunlap.
About three weeks ago, Mr. Miller flew down to Mr. Dunlap's Boca Raton, Fla., home, reading "Mean Business" on the way. Mr. Dunlap's wife made them sandwiches. And they talked about Waste Management for several hours. "It was a very friendly meeting," Mr. Miller says. "I learned a lot and felt good about it."
About the Waste Management job, Mr. Miller says, "We didn't close the door on that at all. He said he had a bit of work left to do at Sunbeam." (Mr. Dunlap in October hired investment bankers to find possible suitors or takeover candidates for Sunbeam, and says he won't stick around if Sunbeam is sold.)
"Had we wanted to seriously pursue it, I think he would have been interested," Mr. Miller says. But Mr. Dunlap's press release Friday prompts Mr. Miller to add, "I guess now he has taken himself out of the running."
Mr. Dunlap's broadside stunned Mr. Miller. "I just don't recall any public dressing down like that," he says.
After seeing it, he called Mr. Dunlap's office to apologize for having said that the Sunbeam CEO was campaigning for the Waste Management job. Mr. Dunlap didn't return the call.
"Dow Jones News Service"
"Copyright(c) 1997, Dow Jones & Company, Inc." |
