On the Rebound

The rebound principle apparently works in matters of business as well as affairs of the heart. Early this year, when cigarette-making Lorillard Corp. tried to merge with Schenley Industries, it was rebuffed in favor of the Glen Alden Corp. Meanwhile, Loew's Theaters Inc. was scorned when it attempted to merge with Commercial Credit Corp., which opted instead to merge with Control Data Corp. Last week the two losers got together on the rebound. In a complicated swap of Lorillard stock for that of Loew's (value of the exchange: at least $418 million), the two companies plan to merge. Loew's will be the dominant survivor.

The announcement of the prospective merger between Loew's and Lorillard took Wall Street by surprise. Negotiations had been secretly carried on in suburban Scarsdale, N.Y., where both Loew's Chairman Laurence A. Tisch and Lorillard Chairman Manuel Yellen live. Meeting at the Tisch home in Scarsdale, Tisch and Yellen were able to work out within one week a deal by which Lorillard's product line (Kent, True, Newport, Old Gold and Spring cigarettes, Tabby cat food and Reed candies) will join the 14 hotels and 110 theaters controlled by Tisch and a younger brother. The merged company, which will have combined annual sales of more than $700 million, will undoubtedly be making more acquisitions.

Laurence Tisch, 45, has already had a fairly spectacular past. He graduated cum laude from New York University at 18, a year later earned his business-administration degree from Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Father Al Tisch, who had prospered operating summer camps, staked his son to $125,000, and Laurence--consulting ads in the New York Times--used it to purchase a resort hotel in New Jersey. He and his brother expanded before long to New York, where they bought or built such hotels as the Drake, the Warwick and the Americana. In 1960, at the ripe age of 37, Tisch acquired Loew's. The hotel and theater chain has grown a lot since then, but it is still only a quarter the size of the cigarette maker it took over last week.

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