Black Ink at Collier's

As the new boss of Crowell-Collier Publishing Co., Paul Smith set as his first goal the job of getting into the black. Last week, after 18 months on the job, he reached it. For the first time in nearly three years, Crowell-Collier (Collier's, American Magazine, Woman's Home Companion) showed a profit: $100,000 for the first half of 1955, v. a loss of $1,734,510 for 1954's first half. In this year's second quarter even Collier's, the company's biggest money-loser, brought in a profit.

Once a profit was in sight, Crowell-Collier President Smith set to work to bring in badly needed new capital. He laid his financial problem before Manhattan Broker Edward L. Elliott, who found him a group of 26 big investors, including Chicago Financier J. Patrick Lannan (see BUSINESS). The Elliott group agreed to buy $3,000,000 worth of new Crowell-Collier debentures, convertible to 600,000 common stock shares (at $5 a share). It also took an option to buy half the 400,000 shares (26% of outstanding stock) held by the late Joseph Knapp's Publication Corp. and voted by Crowell-Collier Chairman Clarence Stouch. The new group wanted to clip Stouch's power, make Smith top man.

By boosting authorized stock from 1,700,000 shares to 3,000,000 (to cover the convertible debentures) and buying up 200,000 shares of the Publication Corp. stock, the Elliott group can dilute Publication Corp.'s share in Crowell-Collier to as low as 6.5%, thus end its working control. If all goes well at a special stockholders' meeting next week, most of Crowell-Collier's old 17-man board will resign, to be replaced by a streamlined, nine-man board which will be controlled by the Elliott group. Smith left no question about who will then run Crowell-Collier: he has already been named "chief executive officer."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.