The Du Pont McCoy

E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., the world's largest chemical firm, last week named the twelfth president in its 165-year history. He succeeds Lammot du Pont Copeland, 62, who moves up to chairman. While he becomes only the second president from outside the Du Pont family, Charles Brelsford ("Brel") McCoy, 58, hardly ranks as an interloper. Son of a onetime Du Pont vice president, McCoy has two sons and a brother working for the com pany, and his sister Anne is married to Du Pont Secretary Henry T. Bush. An other brother is Landscape Painter John McCoy,-two of whose works have long hung in Du Pont's walnut-paneled president's office in Wilmington.

Brel McCoy's own connection with Du Pont began when he worked for the company during summer vacations from college. After graduating from the University of Virginia (Phi Beta Kappa) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (master's degree in chemical engineering), he hired on full time in 1932 as a lowly cellophane-machine operator before advancing into such jobs as chemist, industrial engineer and purchasing agent. He rose through a succession of middle-management jobs, in 1960 became chief of Du Pont's explosives division. The following year he was named vice president and a member of the company's all-powerful executive committee.

Three Against Malaise. Though his new job automatically makes him chairman of that committee, McCoy will continue to have but one vote--the same as the other eight members. Also retaining a voice in company policy will be Copeland, who succeeds Crawford H. Greenewalt, 65, as board chairman; Greenewalt stays on as chairman of Du Pont's finance committee. Together, the three men will bear much of the responsibility for lifting Du Pont out of its recent malaise.

The company's sales, a record $3.16 billion in 1966, are expected to be off by at least 3% this year. Earnings could be down by as much as 24% from last year's $389 million. A main source of that slump is lagging profits in the synthetic-fiber business. Accounting for about one-third of Du Pont sales, synthetics have been hurt by a slowdown in the textile industry caused largely by rising imports and falling prices. While Du Pont continues to base hopes for recovery on its huge research budget ($110 million a year), McCoy realistically admits that "the more discoveries we make, the more rapidly our competitors move in against us."

*Brother-in-law of Artist Andrew Wyeth, whose own brother Nathaniel happens to be a Du Pont engineer.

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