![]() ![]() The company lost $2 million in six years, before it was sold to Citibank. Barron Hilton was very interested in making gambling a part of the Hilton empire. This led him to move the company's focus away from hotels. In 1964, the company spun off its international hotels to shareholders because Barron argued that the parts were worth more than the whole, a move that some questioned. In 1967, Barron convinced his father, the biggest stockholder of Hilton International, to sell his shares to Trans World Airlines (TWA) in exchange for that company's stock. Barron, an aviation enthusiast, thought the TWA stock would go up in value, but instead it plummeted. Barron Hilton took over as president and chief executive officer of the Hilton Hotels Corporation in February 1966.When Conrad died in 1979, at the age of 91, Barron became the new chairman of the board. Hilton was one of the first businesspeople to use management leaseback deals. In 1975, the company sold half its equity in six major hotels, but continued to manage the properties in return for a percentage of room revenues and gross profits. This was one of the first management lease-back deals in the hotel industry. He received $83 million in the deal, which was used to buy back 20 percent of the company's stock. This turned out to be a smart purchase because the stock increased in value sevenfold. In 1972, Hilton bought control of two Las Vegas casinos, paying $112 million for them. Growth in the hotel part of his empire came from expanding the number of hotels it franchised. His strategy of owning very few properties outright was later imitated by other hotel companies in the 1980s. Seemingly a contrarian in the 1980s, Hilton sold many of his assets when others in the industry were building. Other hotel chains developed new formats such as suite hotels and vacation ownership resorts. ![]() Some critics viewed him as being overly conservative, but his waiting paid off. When he saw which of the new formats were successful, he came up with similar products of his own. This watch and wait strategy caused the company's stock to increase in value. When his father died in 1979, he left Hilton several hundred thousand dollars in cash. The bulk of his fortune, almost 13.5 million shares of Hilton Hotels stock, went to the Conrad Hilton Foundation to help Roman Catholic nuns worldwide. Hilton controlled another 3.4 percent of the 25 million shares. He claimed his father's will gave him the option to buy the stake from the foundation at the 1979 price of $24 a share, a total of $330 million less than the 1988 market price. A California superior court ruled against Hilton in 1986. The settlement, reached in November of 1989, gave four million shares to Hilton outright, 3.5 million shares to the foundation, and six million shares to a trust, with Hilton serving as executor. He was allowed to keep 60 percent of any dividends paid on the trust's shares for the next 20 years. After the year 2008, those payments and ownership of the shares revert to the foundation. The settlement meant that Hilton could vote the foundation's shares, giving him control of over 25 percent of the outstanding stock in the company. In April 1998, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the sale of as many as 24 million Hilton shares from the charitable trust he controls. ![]()
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