CAN FINANCIER LIGHT A FIRE AT SUNBEAM? Broward Metro Edition

• Published in: Sun-sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)
• Main Author: Ellen Joan Pollock and Martha Brannigan The Wall Street Journal
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fort Lauderdale Tribune Publishing Company, LLC 23.08.1998

Perelman's team is running Sunbeam Corp., a company that has brought mostly heartache to a succession of chief executives and mutual-fund executive Michael Price, who controls the biggest block of its stock. Two months ago, the [Ronald O.] Perelman camp was virtually handed the management of Sunbeam by a frazzled board of directors that had just fired Chief Executive Albert Dunlap. Sunbeam also is the kind of investment Perelman strives to avoid. The financier typically wants total charge of his properties. "We're not a minority investor," says Howard Gittis, his right-hand man. Perelman's Sunbeam position, owned through his closely held MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., is 14 percent. But now, Perelman's longtime in-house turnaround artist, Jerry Levin, is Sunbeam's chief executive, and about a dozen other Perelman loyalists have descended on Sunbeam's Delray Beach headquarters. Last week, Perelman tightened his grip, when the Sunbeam board agreed to grant him warrants to buy 23 million shares of Sunbeam stock at $7 a share. If he exercises his warrants, he will become the company's biggest shareholder with a 28 percent stake, exceeding the 17 percnet Price controls through Franklin Resources Inc.'s Mutual Series funds.