Hostile Bid Reflects Style Of Hurwitz Texan Has Earned Reputation For Past Takeover Activities

Perhaps, after all, aluminum is magnetic.

The light metal certainly has a pull on Charles Hurwitz, who has decided to acquire a second aluminum company just eight years after he bought his first - Kaiser Aluminum Corp.

Kaiser Thursday disclosed a bid made earlier this month for Georgia-based Alumax Inc. The Alumax board of directors rebuffed the offer.

The gambit is the latest for Hurwitz, a Houston-based businessman renowned - and reviled - for some of his past takeover activities.

Since 1973, he has built an empire based on real estate, timber and aluminum. Most are held by Maxxam Inc., which he has headed for 17 years.

Maxxam, which earned $57.5 million last year, has majority ownership of Kaiser.

He has also been involved in the oil, banking and sewing pattern business. He made an unsuccessful bid for Continental Airlines in 1992.

Hurwitz is an astute buyer.

He purchased the Pacific Lumber Co. in 1986 after identifying an overfunded pension plan and significantly undervalued redwood timber.

But Hurwitz was quickly dubbed “The Redwood Raider” when he accelerated the harvest of old-growth trees to raise cash.

Two years later, he snatched Kaiser away from another takeover artist, Alan Clore, when the European investor could not meet margin obligations in the wake of the October 1987 stock market swoon.

And in 1991, Maxxam became one of the first companies to purchase land and mortgages from the Resolution Trust Corp., which was liquidating the assets from failed thrifts.

Ironically, it was his stewardship of United Savings Bank of Texas that in December put Hurwitz’s name on 13 claims filed by the Office of Thrift Supervision.

The action alleges Hurwitz and others conducted “unsafe and unsound practices” in managing United Savings, which failed in 1988 at a cost to the federal treasury of $1.6 billion.

A Maxxam spokesman refuted the charges.

With Kaiser, Hurwitz has been content to let those who know the aluminum industry run the business while he has focused on reducing and restructuring the company’s punishing load of debt.

If Kaiser and Alumax do indeed merge, his skill with a balance sheet will again be tested.

, DataTimes