All Aboard as Nassco Seeks New Markets
Despite last week’s good news at National Steel & Shipbuilding--a $290.9-million Navy contract with options that could elevate its worth to $1 billion--company officials will continue with plans to explore new revenue avenues besides shipbuilding.
Not only will Nassco continue to bid on small Navy and private ship repair jobs, but the bayfront company will also look at related areas of work, such as building steel for buildings, bridges and roads.
Included in that new direction will be a bid to work on the eastern extension of the San Diego Trolley.
“We’re still looking aggressively for other ways to employ” workers, said Fred Hallet, Nassco’s vice president of finance and corporate relations.
“Whether we can be competitive in these markets . . . still must be determined.”
Regardless of what future contracts the company lands, Hallet said, last week’s 10% pay cut for salaried workers will remain intact.
Home Fed Closing Hong Kong Outlet
Quietly, Home Federal Savings & Loan is planning to close its Hong Kong office, opened in mid-1984 to tap the Asian equity capital market.
The company “wants to go back to the basic business it knows well,” according to Charles Taylor, Home Federal’s first vice president and chief lending officer.
The office--which is profitable, according to Home Federal officials--will be closed in the next couple of months.
The handful of staff people in Hong Kong will be hired by the firm taking over the office, which Taylor refused to identify.
“There’s no great mystery to this thing,” Taylor said. “It just doesn’t fit our general business picture. We’re in the savings and loan business (and now) we’ll be more traditional.”
Compelling Appeal in Bond Case
Normally, E.F. Hutton’s appeal of a Superior Court jury’s $370,534 award to a former Hutton client--who accused the brokerage house of buying bonds he didn’t want--would take years.
But attorney Gary Wiles, the client’s lawyer, figures he has the upper hand. Client Philip J. Maggio, a retired securities analyst, is 76 years old and there’s a rule that the appeals process can be accelerated if there’s a “compelling reason.”
College Chum Becomes a Success Story
David Thomkins (he’s president of La Jollans Inc.) remembers one of his more famous Sigma Chi fraternity brothers at Columbia University as the “guy working behind the scenes, the guy who was willing to take action quietly.”
Indeed. Thomkins, Class of ‘62, remembers clearly one Frank Lorenzo, a member of the Class of 1961 but more importantly the man who, as chairman of Texas Air, has built the nation’s largest airline company.
“He didn’t have to be the center of attention, but he was always the thinker and the planner,” Thomkins told Times reporter Greg Johnson recently.
Thomkins remembered Lorenzo, who two weeks ago officially added New York Air and People Express to his airline holdings, as “the scholarship kid who lived in Queens, commuted to school and worked part-time at Macy’s.”
And Now, Goodby
First-person writing isn’t the norm in this 3-year-old column. But I’ll make an exception this time.
Next week, I start as a business reporter for KCST (Channel 39). It will be the first daily business segment on San Diego commercial television.
The bottom line: This is my last column on these pages.
