Mixed Grill: The Sunbeam Shuffle, Or How Ron Perelman Wound Up in Control --- Ouster of Al Dunlap, Led By Envoy of Mike Price, Put Financier's Man In --- Now, Appliances to Peddle

Mr. 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 Perelman camp was virtually handed the management of Sunbeam by...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Wall Street journal. Eastern edition
Main Author By Ellen Joan Pollock and Martha Brannigan
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, N.Y Dow Jones & Company Inc 19.08.1998
EditionEastern edition
Subjects
Corporate governance
Dunlap, Albert J
Equity stake
Executives
Investment bankers
Investments
Levin, Jerry W
Perelman, Ronald O
Price, Michael (investor)
Sales
Shareholder derivative suits
Stockholders
Strategic planning
Turnaround management
Wage & price controls
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Summary:Mr. 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 Perelman camp was virtually handed the management of Sunbeam by a frazzled board of directors that had just fired Chief Executive Albert Dunlap. Running an ailing small-appliance maker wasn't exactly what Mr. Perelman had in mind in March, when he sold Sunbeam his 82% stake in camping-equipment maker Coleman Co. But neither was watching the price of his Sunbeam stock slide from a high of $53 to a low last week of $5.125. But now, Mr. 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, Fla., headquarters. Last week, Mr. 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% stake, exceeding the 17% Mr. Price controls through Franklin Resources Inc.'s Mutual Series funds. Mr. Perelman's involvement with Sunbeam didn't begin smoothly. First, there was what one Sunbeam insider calls "the f-you meeting" last December. At the 55-year-old financier's Palm Beach home, he and Mr. Dunlap, now 61, clashed mightily over the price of a proposed sale of Coleman to Sunbeam. Mr. Dunlap "basically told Ronald (O. Perelman) and Howard they didn't know how to do a deal," says a person involved in the transaction. "Most people don't say that to Ronald." Mr. Dunlap stormed out of the house cursing and later told associates that he had put Mr. Perelman in his place.
ISSN:0099-9660