Pritzker Family, EDS Plan to Buy Ticor Title Parent
Chicago’s billionaire Pritzker family and Electronic Data Systems, the computer services firm now owned by General Motors, said Tuesday that they plan to join forces to buy the parent company of Los Angeles-based Ticor Title Insurance.
Though the purchase price was not disclosed, a source close to the sale indicated that it was between $100 million and $125 million.
EDS and New Century Enterprises, a firm owned by the Pritzkers, announced that they have reached an agreement in principle to buy Westwood Equities, a real estate financial services firm whose principal subsidiary is Ticor Title.
Westwood Equities is a privately owned firm whose major shareholders include Winston V. Morrow, the chairman and chief executive, and Harold Geneen, ex-chief executive of ITT Corp.
Officials close to the sale touted the proposed agreement as one that would give EDS an entree into the title-insurance business and provide Ticor with cash to expand and a new sophisticated computer system installed and managed by EDS.
“We have computers now, but we still use them more as typewriters,” Morrow said in a telephone interview.
The Pritzkers will provide the expertise to make the business grow, according to Roger Still, an EDS spokesman. The Pritzkers could not be reached for comment.
One of the nation’s wealthiest families, the Pritzkers generally try to keep a low profile. Their extensive business holdings, valued at $4.5 billion, include the Hyatt hotel chain.
EDS is the Dallas-based firm founded by H. Ross Perot. The maverick Texas billionaire launched the company in 1962 with $1,000 after quitting his job as an IBM salesman. Perot sold EDS to General Motors in 1984 for $700 million.
Formed in the late 1800s, Ticor is one of the nation’s largest and oldest title insurance companies and now operates in virtually every county in the country. A title insurer guards against document forgeries and guarantees that a property does not have conflicting ownership claims. If losses result from property-record forgeries, the title insurer bears the cost.
In recent years, Ticor has struggled financially. Its mortgage-insurance operations were badly hurt several years ago by massive foreclosures brought on by the 1985 failure of a property-syndication firm known as Equity Programs Investment Corp., or EPIC.
To minimize embarrassment to the Ticor name, the firm changed the name of Ticor Mortgage Insurance Co. to TMIC Insurance. TMIC is in the process of being liquidated under the supervision of the California insurance commissioner.
