New Fluor Boss Carroll Has Big Job to Do Starting Today

Fluor Corp., its stock sagging after being downgraded last week over concerns about slowing demand for its services, is preparing to greet its new chairman this morning.

Former Shell Oil Co. President Philip J. Carroll reports for duty as Fluor’s new chief executive just two weeks after retiring at the Houston-based oil company. He attended a reception at Fluor’s Irvine headquarters in May, about three weeks after his appointment was announced, and pressed the flesh with hundreds of Fluor employees. So there won’t be any big to-do this week. He plans to spend the first few days meeting managers and getting a feel for the personalities he’ll be working with.

Carroll, 60, ran Shell Oil for five years and led an aggressive expansion campaign that more than doubled net profits--to $2.1 billion last year from $781 million in 1993.

Ironically, the company he’s taking over got into trouble last year because of an aggressive expansion plan that saw profits and income soar but let control of critical operations slip away from then-Chairman and Chief Executive Leslie McCraw and his top managers. McCraw resigned in January to battle cancer.

Industry analysts say Carroll’s job is not a sinecure.

Fluor, like other companies involved in the energy industry, faces weakened demand for its services from clients in economically struggling Asia and Indonesia.

Analysts at Salomon Smith Barney lowered their ratings on the company’s stock to “outperform” from “buy”--meaning they think Fluor will do better than the market as a whole but that they are reluctant to urge investors to gobble up the shares. The analysts are concerned that weak energy prices could affect some large projects and that chemical industry capital spending may be peaking.

Fluor stock closed Tuesday at $46.56 a share on the New York Stock exchange, down from $50.38 when the downgrading was announced last Thursday. At their peak last year, Fluor’s shares traded at $75.