How to Loot a Company

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Slow-running Waltham Watch Co. last week ticked off its sixth major management switch, in the last ten years. Control of the oldest U.S. watch company was sold by Sydney Albert's Bellanca Corp. to a group headed by Joseph Axler, 44, who owns three wholesale watch companies, claims to be the largest U.S. watch distributor. He became Waltham president. In as board chairman went Max A.

Geller, 57, who was president of New Haven Clock & Watch Co. from 1949 to 1954.

Axler, Geller and friends paid $600,000 for 16.6% of Waltham's stock, almost exactly what Bellanca paid for it a year ago. They got a company with 483 employees, sales of $4.8 million in 1955 (down from $11.2 million in 1947), and earnings last year of $70,764 (just 4¢ per share). Axler hopes to win back Waltham's almost nonexistent consumer trade in the $39.75 to $125 watch market, also expand the industrial division (speedometers, gyroscopes, aircraft equipment) that now does 90% of Waltham's total business.