California's Edgar Kaiser, 56, is an
uncommonly sentimental tycoon. Whenever he sees his father, the
legendary Henry J. Kaiser, 82, he greets the old man with a warm hug
and a kiss. Two weeks ago, when Edgar was decorated with Brazil's Order
of the Southern Cross, the tears flowed freely down his cheeks. On
business matters, however, Edgar Kaiser is eminently dry-eyed. Finally
stepping out of his father's long shadow, he has taken full charge of
the family's 100-company empire and spread the business into 40
countries on six continents. Last week, as the last of their major
companies reported for 1964, the Kaisers toted up profits of $46
million on sales of $1.3 billion. For their major manufacturing arms,
it was the brightest year since Henry J. started making steel, building
ships and breaking production records in 1941. Rising on Risks. Next week Edgar Kaiser will jet from his headquarters
in Oakland, Calif., to Venezuela, where Kaiser engineers head a
consortium of companies from five nations that is building the $137
million Guri Dam. Meanwhile, Kaiser Aluminum is busy putting up new
plants in West Berlin, Turkey and Japan. Kaiser Steel has just closed
the largest trade deal in Australia's history: with a local partner, it
will sell $600 million worth of iron ore to Japan over the next 15
years. Kaiser Cement & Gypsum this month opened a mill in Florida, and
later this year will start up another in New Jersey, thus invading the
eastern U.S. market. Like his father, Edgar rushes in where the timid fear to tread,
following the company's slogan—”Find a need, and fill it.” Optimism is
the cornerstone of the Kaiser philosophy, and Edgar argues with folksy
persuasion that the world's needs are bound to rise so fast that he
would be foolish not to try to meet them. Such a philosophy obviously has built-in risks. Kaiser has taken on an
extraordinarily heavy debt load, which both limits the payment of cash
dividends and makes the company vulnerable to any severe recession in
the future. Last year his engineers lost $16 million, largely because a
Kaiser dam in Greece was washed out by floods. A dike-building project
in Israel was damaged when the Dead Sea overflowed—for the first time
since the days of Moses. Other businessmen often wonder why Kaiser is
deeply committed in such unpredictable areas as Latin America , or India , or Ghana . To such questioning, Edgar gives a
disarming answer: “How are you ever going to give these people the
opportunity to know us unless you work with them?”
