Dining ‘a la Card’

Ever wondered what happens when an absent-minded restaurant patron leaves behind a credit card?

At Tribeca, a hot new eatery in Beverly Hills, customers get a week’s grace to come in to pick up the card--then the staff cuts it into bite-size pieces and throws it away.

“There are so many people who leave credit cards here,” said a Tribeca employee in response to a question about why she hadn’t tried to track down one diner whose card was with a big local bank. “I’d spend hours (trying to find people). Yesterday I had four.”

A Banker’s Coming of Age

An intriguing factor in First Interstate Bancorp’s rising stock price is the fate of its chairman and chief executive officer, Joseph J. Pinola, who reaches the bank’s mandatory retirement age of 65 next May.

The dominant view on Wall Street is that he is determined to go out a winner by pulling out all the stops to get the bank’s far-flung operations working perfectly in the next 11 months. But some think Pinola wants to use strong performance and the potential of an unfriendly takeover in 1991 to persuade the board to keep him on past 65.

If Pinola has to bow out next year, look for him to name a successor by early next year. The favorites remain Edward M. Carson, president of the parent company, and William E. B. Siart, chairman of First Interstate Bank of California.

Few Women on Board

The woman who recently volunteered herself for the Vons Cos. board knew whereof she griped. There just are not very many women directors at Fortune 1000 firms.

A survey by Heidrick & Struggles, an executive search firm, shows a 14% increase nationally in women directors, but male directors still outnumber women by nearly 19 to 1. In the West, a 15.6% increase in women on boards during the past three years raises the percentage of female directors to only 5.4%.

Eastern companies have a higher percentage of women directors (7.1%) and seem to be improving faster. Worst records are in the Southwest and South, where women account for only 3.3% and 3.6%. The Midwest is in the middle, with 4.8% of directors’ seats occupied by women.

Even Nancy Reagan’s recent election to the board of New York-based Revlon Group isn’t going to increase the numbers. She replaces a woman.

They Get No Respect

Entrepreneurs got a laugh at the investment banking community’s expense last week during a forum sponsored by UC San Diego’s CONNECT program, which matches start-ups with well-heeled companies that are seeking investment opportunities.

Robert Corey, president of Four Pi Systems, a small, San Diego-based high-tech company, described an investment banking firm that his company had retained as “one of the more reputable” firms.

He paused and then added: “Well, let’s just say they’re one of the better known” companies.

A Childproof Defense

David A. Stevens, chairman of London-based MIM Ltd., a British investment fund, gave an impromptu and impassioned defense of his company--and himself--during Oak Industries’ annual meeting last week in San Diego.

MIM, Oak’s largest shareholder, has been drawn into a bitter proxy battle between Oak Chairman E. L. McNeely and ousted Oak director Roderick M. Hills. While responding to allegations made during the acrimonious meeting, Stevens told nearly 300 Oak shareholders that both of his children had been educated in America, and were in fact now living in the United States.

Stevens offered that tidbit of personal news, he said, because “the next thing that’s going to be said is that I’m anti-American.”