Aviation Firm Names Its New Top Gun

Aviation Distributors Inc. said Friday that it hired a new chief executive to anchor its management team and boost investor confidence as it tries to recover from claims it falsified sales figures to get a bank loan.

The Lake Forest airplane parts reseller named Saleem S. Naber, an aerospace industry executive, as president and chief executive. It also hired Gary L. Joslin as vice president and chief financial officer.

Naber replaces company founder Osamah S. Bakhit, who resigned his management positions and his board seat as chairman in November.

Aviation has been struggling to regain its footing since last August when Arthur Andersen LLP accused it of obtaining a loan with phony sales figures and then trying to cover up its action. The Big 6 accounting firm’s claims were part of a securities document that disclosed that it had resigned as the company’s auditor and had withdrawn financial reports for the past three years.

Nasdaq officials halted trading of the company’s stock in September and delisted the shares in October.

Amid the uproar, the company formed an executive committee to manage its operations, and Naber and Joslin will join it. The committee will continue operating until Aviation’s audit committee decides the new “management infrastructure has matured” enough to resume those duties, the company said in a statement released Friday.

Naber also will serve on the board of directors.

The company is preparing financial reports, to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, so it can try to get back on a stock exchange, said Kenneth Lipinski, the company’s chief operating officer. “We’re going to get our shares relisted, whether it’s Nasdaq or not,” he said.

Aviation was formed in 1992 and went public in March 1997 by selling about 1.2 million shares at $5 each. Before the trading halt, the stock was trading at $12.13 per share, near its high of $13.38 a share.

At the time Bakhit resigned his executive positions, Mark W. Ashton also stepped down as chief financial officer and a director. Arthur Andersen had suggested that Aviation fire Bakhit, but he has remained with the company to help with sales and marketing. Ashton left.

Bakhit owns about 60% of Aviation’s common stock, but has turned over control of it to a trustee. Still, he pledged 1 million shares in February as additional collateral both for the company’s $15-million line of credit and for a new $2.3-million loan, Lipinski said.

Meanwhile, shareholders have filed three federal lawsuits against the company, accusing it of providing false financial information that inflated the company’s stock price. Bakhit and Ashton are named as defendants as well.

Aviation hired a new auditing firm, Grant Thornton LLP, in November.