Investment Executive Joins Smith Board

Ron Langley, the 42-year-old president of North American operations for Industrial Equity (Pacific) Ltd., a New Zealand and Australian investment group that in recent months has purchased 15% of financially ailing Smith International Inc., was elected last week to Smith’s board of directors.

Langley had said in February that Smith Chairman and Chief Executive Officer G. W. Neely “flatly refused” Industrial Equity’s original request for two representatives on the Smith board.

But Loren Carroll, Smith’s chief financial officer, said Monday that there had been a “misunderstanding” in communications. He said Neely only wanted to be assured of the qualifications of anyone nominated by Industrial Equity, which has become the single largest Smith shareholder.

Ultimately, Carroll said, the board decided to accept one Industrial Equity representative. He said Langley was an appropriate choice because of his “good financial background.”

Langley could not be reached for comment Monday. But he said in a February interview that Industrial Equity wanted a presence on Smith’s board because “we have a substantial investment in the company and we would like to more closely monitor that investment.”

He said in that interview that Industrial Equity has no plans to seize control of the ownership and management of Smith, an oil services firm, which is operating under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Also elected to the Smith board last week was Moak Rawlins, 65, president of Financo, a financial consulting firm in Austin, Tex., and founder of Drilco, an oil field and mining products company Smith acquired in the early 1950s.

Langley and Rawlins filled two vacancies on the nine-member board of directors. The new board members replace Fred J. Barnes, who resigned effective Jan. 1 as president and chief operating officer of Smith International, and Security Pacific National Corp. director Carl E. Hartnack, who resigned from the Smith board early last year.

In addition, Josh Hulce, who stepped down as president and a director of Manville Corp. last April as part of a management shake-up at the giant Denver-based building and forest products firm, joined the Smith board in November. Hulce was Manville’s president while the company was preparing its Chapter 11 reorganization plan.

Hulce, now a principal in the Denver-based merchant banking firm of Stephenson & Hulce, replaced Bazil Kantzer, who resigned from Smith’s board of directors last year.