One Man's Show

"I haven't met an employee for 20 years," said Los Angeles Financier Howard Ahnflanson not long ago. "My secret weapon is money." Within that context, Ahmanson was a total success. At the time of his death after a heart attack last week in the small Belgian town of Marche-en-Famenne during a European holiday, Ahmansjon, 61, was the sole ruler of a savings-and-loan, banking and insurance combine that had earned him a personal fortune worth at least $300 million.

Key to Ahmanson's financial colossus was his Beverly Hills-based Home Savings & Loaji Association, which, with assets of $2.5 billion, is nearly double the size of its nearest rival. Ahmanson built it from a single Los Angeles S & L he picked up in 1947 for the fire-sale price of $162,000. All told, the chain now serves some 775,000 depositors at 32 branches, takes in $1,000,000 a day in new deposits.

Instinctively Wary. Ahmanson's growth was as phenomenal as that of Southern California itself. The Omaha-born son of the owner of a small insurance company, Ahmanson had built a $20,000 stake in the stock market by age 18, moved west to sell fire insurance, took to buying up foreclosed property during the Depression when, as he recalled, the "worse things got, the better they were for me." And when things got better for Ahmanson, they were fantastic. Deep in both S & Ls and real estate when the California building boom hit in the 1950s, Ahmanson profited from both sides, selling not only the land but also home mortgages. Sensing yet another change, Ahmanson more recently turned to apartment projects.

He was instinctively wary of "committees and boards and shareholders." Although he delegated responsibility for day-to-day operations to the top men in his five divisions, there was never the slightest doubt about who was boss. "If you ever have two men who can run your business," he once advised, "you should open another business." As his enterprise grew, Ahmanson more and more tended to run it from a distance. After doctors recommended thrice-daily swims when he suffered a heart attack eleven years ago, Ahmanson kept office hours close to the pool at his Tudor mansion in suburban Los Angeles. Over the past decade, he visited his Beverly Hills headquarters no more than a dozen times.

Inexorable Growth. What is ahead for the one-man show--whose assets, all told, come to some $3 billion? Ownership of Ahmanson's H. F. Ahmanson & Co., a holding company, is already parceled out in part to 1) the Ahmanson Foundation, which supplied $2,000,000 to the new Los Angeles County Art Museum; 2) his second wife, Caroline, whom he married in 1965; and 3) his only child, Howard Jr., 18, a student at Occidental College. Stock remaining in Howard Sr.'s name will go to a trust.

No one is likely to inherit his single-handed control of the company, and more people are now likely to be making more decisions. Heading the list are Ahmanson's two nephews, William, 41, and Robert Ahmanson, 39, longtime aides who will have a strong say in running the trust. Others are Robert De Kriuf, 49, president of Ahmanson's holding company since 1956, and Home's president, Richard H. Deihl, 39, whom Ahmanson spotted as a comer soon after he joined the association as a loan agent in 1960.

Ahmanson interests seem sure to grow inexorably broader--and taller. Next month, on a 3.9-acre Wilshire Boulevard site, work will start on a Home-financed, Edward Durell Stone-designed office-building complex featuring a 40-story tower. Scheduled for completion in 1970 at a cost of $75 million, the project is called, naturally enough, Ahmanson Center.

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