Sol Price Part IV: FIRED!
By the early 1970s Fedmart was a publicly held corporation, operating as far east as Texas and active in a wide range of businesses, but its stock had gone flat. In 1974, Price tried taking the company private again in a leveraged buyout, then dropped the idea when the SEC seemed likely to object.
Almost immediately, German retailer Hugo Mann made a bid for the company. As Sol Price recalls it, Fedmart management was "romanced" passionately: An infusion of German money would make all sorts of new ideas possible. Everything would be wunderbar. Between the romancing and the genuine feeling that, at least short-term, the buyout was the best deal for stockholders, Price agreed to sell.
"Within months, the romancing stopped. Then I was fired."*
The firing left Price, in his late fifties, moderately wealthy (the payout for his departure finally amounted to a little under $2 million), but with no career, when he was still in the prime of life.
What to do?
*Shortly after the firing the romance ended for Mann, too. With no understanding of the American scene, he soon ran Fedmart into the ground and then left the business.
Excerpted from:
The Great American Idea Book: How to Make Money from Your Ideas for Movies, Music, Books, Inventions, Businesses and Almost Anything Else!
Authors: Bob Coleman & Deborah Neville
Publisher: WW Norton
Copyright: 1993; 1995
All Rights Reserved
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