PERSONALITIES

ANY of our key men can say yes to top decisions," insists Kenneth Stanley Adams, 64, chairman of Oklahoma-based Phillips Petroleum. "Only I can say no." Fortunately for Phillips, Kansas-born "Boots" Adams rarely says' no to growth. He set the stage for Phillips' expansion--and for his succession to Founder Frank Phillips--by buying up huge Oklahoma City oil leases, then pushing through a 1936 referendum to allow drilling inside city limits. He led the drive that got Phillips, then just a supplier, into marketing (with 23,440 gas stations) and pushed the extensive research that has made Phillips a front runner in petrochemicals and gas. Result: Phillips now ranks eighth among the majors, with 1962 sales of $1.2 billion. Another nod led to the construction of a record-sized (22,000 tons) tanker for hauling refrigerated gas, launched last week in Sweden. Adams' finds it equally hard to say no to his aged mother. At her insistence, he recently returned home to Kansas City dutifully pumped Phillips for a neighbor who had just opened a new gas station.

FEW bosses who hire sons-in-law reap whirlwinds of the like of Daniel E. Hogan Jr., 46. After the marriage, Yaleman Hogan helped Father-in-Law John Bolten sell his small Massachusetts plastics company, start a successful transistor plant, sell that, and then buy into a string of small businesses that range from printing to Latin American Coca-Cola franchises. Their biggest purchase, three years ago, was Lestoil liquid detergent, which was doing well then but shortly afterward was hard hit by the entrance of the giants into the field; sales sagged from $24 to $14 million. Hogan, after first losing out on an ill-advised attempt to market Lestoil nationally, has retrenched and regionalized, brought in young management and acquired several other companies. He recently bought control of battered Bon Ami, and on Jan. 1 will make it a Lestoil subsidiary--.

Hogan admits his lack of interest in marketing, lets subordinates run his companies. "Once something is put together," he says, "my interest in it drops off almost to zero."

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