A Visionary Exits

During his long and often innovative business career, William Norris, founder and chairman of Control Data, has gained a controversial reputation. To admirers he is the visionary who created a company that built the first supercomputers and quickly grew into a major force in the data-processing industry. To critics, Norris is a headstrong executive who has squandered corporate resources on well-intentioned but unprofitable social projects and stayed too long at the head of his now ailing firm.

Last week Norris, 74, decided it was finally time to step aside. At a board meeting at the firm's headquarters in suburban Minneapolis, he announced his retirement from the company he formed in 1957 and has since dominated. He was succeeded as chairman by Robert Price, 55, Control Data's president, who has worked closely with Norris in recent years.

Control Data (estimated 1985 sales: $4.9 billion) faces daunting problems. The company's computer operations have been hit by an industry-wide slump and intense Japanese competition. The twin setbacks have pushed the firm into deep financial trouble. Control Data lost $270 million during the first nine months of 1985, and the red ink could easily pass $300 million for the entire year. To help repay bank loans on which it defaulted last summer, the company is selling Ticketron, its electronic ticketing service, and other operations. An earlier attempt to raise badly needed cash by selling Commercial Credit, Control Data's financial unit, failed last year for want of a buyer willing to pay the asking price.

Control Data's profits have been dampened over the years by Norris' enthusiasm for social causes and experimental projects. He has committed the company to ventures that range from the development of wind-powered generators to an effort to revitalize urban neighborhoods. Says Gary Blauer, an analyst with Dain Bosworth, a Minneapolis-based brokerage: "Control Data clearly has in the past been willing to nurture a business for a very long period of time when it wasn't profitable. Wall Street has a hard time with that."

Blauer and other experts expect Price to put more of the company's odd collection of businesses up for sale, and to embark on a management shake-up. The new chairman is also likely to continue the cost-cutting efforts that led to last year's dismissal of more than 7,000 workers in Control Data's computer-peripherals division. Whatever steps he takes, Price may have only limited time to prove himself. If he does not quickly turn Control Data into a leaner and more profitable company, the firm's anxious bankers could soon demand his ouster.