THE REBIRTH OF CHARLES KNAPP
There's a chief executive officer of a large but flagging British corporation who works just four hours a day, five days a week. He doesn't know it, but he'll be redundant when bought out soon by Charles Knapp.
The CEO will have company. There are seven other enterprises, mainly in Europe and the US, all targeted for possible takeover by Knapp, the controversial Californian financier now chairman (and founder) of fledgling merchant bank Trafalgar Holdings of Los Angeles. Thhe targets are unlikely to get wind of Knapp until it's too late -- when he's stealthily accumulated stock and built the blocks into controlling interests. It's all part of the style of reborn Charlie Knapp: a new, more low-key approach than that which used to accompany his business forays.
"I've learned to be far less arrogant today," he told Euromoney.
It was a reference to his flamboyant days as chairman of Financial Corporation of America, the holding company for American Savings, the nation's largest savings and loan company. That association ended in 1984 when he was forced to resign by regulators alarmed at the headlong pace of FCA's growth.