All Aboard
One of the early business trends for 1991 is a fast-revolving door.
Major public officials so far this year are averaging 24.3 days from the time they leave office to the time they take a position on a corporate board.
Former Gov. George Deukmejian took 25 days before joining the board of Santa Fe Pacific Corp. on Feb. 1. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos on Jan. 28 joined the board of Diamond Shamrock Inc., 47 days after he resigned.
Former Federal Reserve Gov. Martha Seger will be tough to beat. She left the Fed last Monday and was a director of Irvine-based Fluor Corp. by Tuesday.
He Gripes Like Andy Rooney
“Frequent Flyer” magazine’s April issue offers business travelers tips and complaints from “60 Minutes” correspondent/frequent flier Mike Wallace. Among the revelations:
* Wallace has trouble sleeping on planes but did successfully snooze on a makeshift bed in the aisle of a recent flight from Tel Aviv to Montreal.
* Wallace dislikes TWA and Pan Am but prefers Pan Am’s shuttle over Trump’s. Wallace likes Delta, Qantas and Cathay Pacific, and compliments Iran Air.
* Wallace prefers male flight attendants over female ones. He also likes older attendants and ones on foreign airlines.
* The pet peeve Wallace mentions most is “heavy-footed attendants.” He was especially disturbed on one flight by “a woman who walked like an elephant, and the whole plane shook.”
Dubious Achievement
The award-winning Hotel Bel-Air can claim another award, although the management there would prefer to pass.
Probe International, a Stamford, Conn.-based consulting firm that specializes in tracking foreign investments in the United States, is giving hotel owner Sazale Group of Tokyo its first “Brooklyn Bridge” award for the most questionable foreign acquisition in the United States.
Sazale (formerly Sekitei Kaihatsu) made a splash in 1989 when it paid $110 million--$1.2 million per room--to buy the hotel in Stone Canyon from Texas billionaire Carolyn Rose Hunt.
At that price, Probe President Benjamin Weiner estimates, the hotel would have to charge $1,200 a night (compared to about $400 now) and be two-thirds booked year-round to make a profit.
Sazale Vice Chairman Eric Prevette argues that the acquisition gives Sazale a prestigious hotel with 12 acres of land, made Sazale an international hotelier and allows it to add the Bel-Air name to some of its other hotels around the world.
Briefly. . .
A First Boston report on the increasingly unpredictable California thrift stocks is titled “Buy, Hold, Sell or What?”. . . Stating the obvious: Banking giant Citicorp’s annual report begins, “A year in which a company’s market value is reduced by $5.1 billion can only be described as a bad year.”. . . Will they grow long fingernails? The Howard Hughes Center office development near LAX is being promoted as “the kind of place where moguls like Howard Hughes will thrive.”
