Business & Finance: Breech's Birthday

• Share

On his 45th birthday last week, zestful, movie-handsome Ernest Robert Breech got the grandest birthday present of his life: the presidency of crucial Bendix Aviation Corp., a 19%-controlled General Motors affiliate. To take the job, Breech quit as G.M. vice president in charge of household appliances and aviation. At Bendix, Founder Vincent Bendix, 60, moved upstairs to board chairman.

In the fast-moving aviation business, Breech is a sprinter. Son of an Ozark blacksmith, he took up accounting, in 1921 won a gold medal for top grades in Illinois State CPA exams. Breech's first real job was auditor for Chicago's Fairbanks, Morse & Co. Six years later he joined Yellow Truck & Coach. When G.M. took over Yellow in 1925, Breech went along as bookkeeper. In 1939 he was a G.M. vice president.

Meanwhile he got the aviation bug, began hanging around airports craning his neck at planes. By 1931 he was a T.W.A. director; by 1933 an officer or director of Western Air Express, Eastern Air Lines, Pan American Airways. Then G.M. made Breech head of wobbly North American Aviation (29.1% G.M.-controlled), told him to boost production and do it fast. Breech did: North American's sales last year were about $100,000,000 against $3,750,000 in 1933.

Established as G.M.'s most dollar-conscious aviation troubleshooter, Breech was a natural for the Bendix berth. Bendix Aviation manufactures a full line of delicate aviation instruments, hundreds of electrical gadgets, generators, carburetors, braking systems, etc. All these are 100% war items. But Bendix suffers from growing pains, has not expanded as fast as other munitions makers. Sales last year were $156,000,000, four times 1937, but still not big enough to supply 1942's war needs.

Like a little boy showing off his birthday train, Breech last week promised: ". . . [Bendix] production in 1942 of approximately $500,000,000 and for 1943 . . . more than $1,000,000,000."