Corporate Moonbeam

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O.K., HE MAY HAVE STRUCK SOME AS A LITTLE flaky. Still, Paul Kazarian qualified as a "mad genius" for leading Sunbeam-Oster out of bankruptcy and back to profitability. But then the 37-year-old wunderkind was dismissed as chairman and chief executive of the $1 billion company.

Kazarian, whose investment group acquired financially troubled Sunbeam-Oster (ne Allegheny International) in 1990, was sacked by the company's board after a series of bizarre incidents. According to the Wall Street Journal, he fired a BB gun at empty chairs during a meeting while shouting "Die! Die!," threw a pint of orange juice past his controller's head, stomped on telephones in anger, and made lewd and vulgar comments to women in public. He was also reported to have regularly berated his senior officers, allegedly calling one of them a "scum." Kazarian denied the allegations.

Although he rewarded them with bonuses of up to 20%, it was not enough to keep a cabal of fed-up senior officers from secretly engineering his ouster. While it has become common for rebellious corporate boards to dismiss underachieving CEOs for uneven performance, this may be the first instance of a board's firing a chief executive for erratic behavior.