Big Deals and Bad Deals

Last year people were talking about how well former Collins Radio president Robert Wilson had done since leaving Dallas to take over the presidency of Memorex. a flagging California electronics corporation. Not only had Wilson turned the company around in two years, but for his stellar performance Wilson was rewarded with a 1975 salary and bonus of $436,000. Now the 1976 results are out and again it is obvious that Wilson didn’t make a mistake by heading West.

Wilson’s 1976 salary and bonus rose to $708,000, which really isn’t all that impressive when it’s compared with his 1976 stock option profits. Last year Wilson bought 185.000 shares of Memorex worth $25.50 a share for his option price of $3.31 a share. That means Wilson turned an instant $4 million paper profit (770 percent) on his stock option, which isn’t bad for a year’s work.

There are, however, plenty of good deals left in Dallas, as the owners of KRLD-AM and KAFM-FM have proved. Since 1970 the two stations have been owned by Philip Jonsson, Kenneth Jonsson and Margaret (Mrs. George) Charlton, the three children of former mayor Erik Jonsson. They have just signed agreements to sell the two stations for $13 million. They purchased the stations seven years ago for $6.75 million. KRLD is being sold, pending FCC approval, to Metromedia, a chain media corporation, for $10,750,000. KAFM is being purchased by Bonneville Corpo. ration, owned by the Mormon Church, for $2,250,000. “’We really weren’t trying to sell the stations,” said Philip Jonsson. “but last summer Metromedia came to us with an offer we couldn’t refuse.”

Not all deals turn out so great. Such is the case with Dallas oilman Harry Bass who last September bought controlling interest in Vail Associates, which owns the Vail, Colorado, ski areas. A few months before Vail’s usual ski season Bass paid $ 14 a share for 400,000 shares of Vail stock. The season was delayed for several months because of scanty snowfall, inflicting considerable losses on all of the Colorado ski resorts, including Vail, a fact which hasn’t gone unnoticed in the stock market. Vail stock recently sold for around $8, which means unless the price rises dramatically by May 1, Bass will have suffered a paper loss of more than $ 10,000 a day since he bought the Vail stock. All told, that’s a $2.4 million loss in nine months.