Jacobs Will Sell Bekins to Management-Led Group

Corporate raider Irwin L. Jacobs’ Minstar Inc. said Thursday that it agreed in principle to sell Bekins Co. of Glendale to its management.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Minstar said it will retain a stake in the 95-year-old moving and storage company after the leveraged buyout but did not disclose the size of its future holdings. In a leveraged buyout, a company is purchased with borrowed funds that are repaid with cash generated through company operations or the sale of assets.

The Bekins management group is led by Bekins President Thomas E. Epley, who joined Bekins in April, 1985.

Minstar bought Bekins in 1983 for nearly $90 million after a bidding war with two other suitors--one a group composed of the financier Belzberg brothers of Vancouver, Canada, and Donald M. Bekins, a former company director and descendant of the founder.

Since Epley joined the company, “we’ve made some wholesale, sweeping changes in the company,” he said. Staff has been trimmed, six subsidiaries have been sold and six have been consolidated, resulting in proceeds and savings totaling about $100 million, Epley said.

Bekins had $2 million in operating profit on $298.1 million in revenue last year.

Bekins, the nation’s fifth-largest moving and storage company, was established in 1891 by Martin Bekins, who came to Southern California from Holland. No Bekins family members currently are part of the company.