Newport, Colorado Companies Join to Invest in Wobbly High-Tech Firms : SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY
A Newport Beach investment company headed by Resdel Industries Chairman Charles Missler is teaming up with a Colorado firm to invest in troubled, high-technology companies.
Missler Rossiter Rugles Holdings, which has investments in Resdel and several other Southern California technology companies, announced Monday that it is merging with Woodmoor Corp., a Colorado Springs, Colo., real estate developer.
Under the agreement, Woodmoor plans to divest its real estate holdings and use the proceeds to acquire stakes in technology companies and provide additional capital to other firms in which Missler Rossiter has investments.
Missler Rossiter owns or controls a majority interest in Resdel Industries, an electronics firm. It also owns a 30% stake in Acculase, a San Diego developer of lasers for the medical, semiconductor and communications markets. Missler Rossiter also holds a small interest in Instant Circuit, a San Diego-area firm that develops computer microchips.
After the merger, which is subject to final approval of shareholders and regulators, the surviving firm would be Woodmoor, a publicly held company whose stock is traded over the counter. Missler Rossiter is a private firm.
Missler will be chairman and chief executive of Woodmoor. Steven N. Arnold, Woodmoor’s current president, will continue in that job. Bruce G. Rossiter, president of Missler Rossiter, will be Woodmoor’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.
“We have the ambition of raising a significant amount of capital from the public to buy positions in troubled high-tech companies,” Arnold said.
Woodmoor is a publicly held real estate investment firm that was active in Colorado in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973, after claiming that Westinghouse Credit Corp. had wrongfully terminated a loan agreement, Woodmoor filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy laws. The company was virtually inactive until the court case was settled in November, 1986, when Westinghouse agreed to pay a $3-million out-of-court settlement.
