Helionetics Reelects Katz to Its Board : Financier Had Quit Under Pressure as a Director Last Year

Beverly Hills financier Bernard B. Katz was reelected to the board of Helionetics Inc. Friday, just 10 months after resigning under pressure as director of the Santa Ana company and three weeks after giving public assurances that he would keep his distance from its day-to-day operations.

The company said Friday that the board also elected Michael Mann, acting president of the laser and power converter manufacturer, president and chief executive. Acting chairman Wilson K. Talley was elected chairman. The changes will be announced Monday.

Katz replaces former Treasury Secretary William Simon, who resigned Jan. 3, citing other business obligations.

The reelection of Katz, the company’s largest shareholder, is the latest twist in an 18-month-long internal struggle over control of the company. In effect, it makes “moot” a voting trust Katz set up last November for his 19% stake in Helionetics, the company said. The trust was intended to distance Katz from the company to appease Wall Street concern that Katz’s controversial past--including a brush with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1977 and adverse publicity since 1980--could tarnish the company’s image.

“I was surprised, I was shocked by the board’s decision,” Katz said. “I just found out last night.”

The company said Talley told the board Friday that Helionetics expects a return to profitablity in the fourth quarter of 1984 and a “significant” increase in revenues in 1985. The company lost $960,000 in the third quarter of 1984 on revenues of $6.1 million.

Mann and Talley fill posts held by Charles Missler, who resigned Dec. 21, citing personal differences with Katz. Several Helionetics directors have said privately that Katz, Missler, Simon and others fought for months over who would run the company. The squabbling bolstered Wall Street’s impression that Helionetics was too busy arguing to attend to daily operations.

Although several Wall Street firms wanted Katz removed from the company, Mann said in an interview last week that several others also “see Bernie as someone who always protects his interests (and) would like to see him unshackled to do so.”

In 1977, Katz agreed, without admitting or denying guilt, to an SEC order barring him from making exaggerated claims about products of Xonics Inc., a medical device maker that Katz founded in Van Nuys.