Management: The Corporate Cezanne

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Peerless & Flawed. Because nothing is simple about Simon, he himself is no longer quite sure whether he is an art connoisseur who engages in business or a businessman who collects art. He approaches both sides from a remarkably similar point of view. Just as he increases the value of a good painting by adding it to his collection, he claims that he also goes after control of new companies only for the purpose of improving them. The difference, of course, is that the art he acquires is peerless, while the companies are usually flawed. Simon sometimes takes years to decide on buying a work of art, investigating, studying, calling in experts to rule out frauds; in like fashion, he ponders and examines companies he wants long and carefully before moving to take over. He believes that it is wiser to make a major money outlay for one significant piece of art than to dribble funds away on the mediocre; he is also willing to lay out huge sums to get major corporations. Says Franklin Murphy, chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles and Simon's closest friend: "Most business men tend to be rather traditional and representational in their approach to business. But I think of Norton as a Cezanne or a Picasso—unconventional, constantly probing and testing, constantly dissatisfied."

In two decades Simon has pushed his Fullerton, Calif., company to top place nationally in the sales of tomato products—catsup, sauce and paste. Hunt's 63 plants include the world's largest vegetable cannery, and the company processes an avalanche of tomatoes that rises to 20 million Ibs. a day in season. While raising Hunt's sales from $20 million two decades ago to today's $435 million, Simon has expanded in non-tomato areas with breath-taking scope. He has grafted onto Hunt the largest U.S. refiner of cottonseed oil (Wesson Oil), the second biggest matchmaker (Ohio Match), the West's biggest paint manufacturer (W. P. Fuller), and a big maker of cans, bottles and can-making machines (Glass Containers Corp.). Ranging far afield from food, he has won effective control of McCall Corp., which had $158 million in sales last year from McCall's magazine (circ.

8.5 million) and from commercial printing; and of Canada Dry, the nation's largest bottler of ginger ale and tonic water (1964 sales: $132 million).

Simon's taste in acquiring companies has become so catholic that many businessmen toss and turn at night wondering where he will strike next. He has become the largest stockholder in Swift & Co., the leading U.S. meat packer and, through McCall's and Hunt, has acquired more than 5% of the stock of American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters, a larger hunk of the third-ranking network than anyone else holds.

In one of his bitterest battles, he recently took over West Virginia's Wheeling Steel, tossed out the chairman-president, and installed himself as chairman.

Crapshooting & Novels. Simon's acquisitive urge started unusually early.