CORPORATIONS: Ouster of Silberstein

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The day of reckoning came last week for pudgy, polished Leopold Dias Silberstein, 53. In the Manhattan board room of his failing Penn-Texas Corp.. directors bounced Silberstein from his two top jobs and turned them over to a pair of "neutral" directors who swing the power balance on the board. Although Silberstein held on to the presidency, his chairmanship of the executive committee went to Milton C. Weisman, 62, law partner of New York City's Congressman Emanuel Celler, and his board chairmanship fell to Banker Aaron L. Jacoby, 63.

Since November, the executive committee has made the decisions that Silberstein once made. It can be overruled only by a three-quarters majority of the twelve-man board, where Silberstein controls five votes. The committee's members: Weisman, Jacoby, Silberstein and a newcomer, Alfons Landa, 60, leader of the anti-Silberstein forces. Landa thus got a strong position from which to reach for more control.

A tough-talking Washington law partner of onetime U.S. Senators Millard Tydings and James Duff, Landa has been a key figure in the proxy battles for many top companies, e.g., Fruehauf Trailer, and the current dispute over S. H. Kress. Late in 1956, Landa joined in the Penn-Texas fight along with Robert Morse Jr., whose Fairbanks, Morse & Co. was threatened by a Silberstein takeover. With Morse bankrolling the fight, Landa led last year's Penn-Texas proxy crusade that elected two anti-Silberstein directors. Landa was also a key man in forcing last November's shake-up that brought Jacoby and Weisman on the board and set up the executive committee to start reining in Silberstein.

To help pay company debts, the board will try to sell two of its seven subsidiaries, Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Co. and Quick-Way Truck Shovel Co. Then it hopes to build up its most promising subsidiary, Pratt & Whitney Co., a machine-toolmaker (no kin to the aircraft-engine firm), while it figures out what to do with Penn-Texas' 46% block of Fairbanks, Morse stock.