CORPORATIONS: New Skipper for Chris-Craft

The nation’s biggest motorboat builder, privately owned Chris-Craft Corp., has long been considered a catch by merger-minded corporations. Both Singer Manufacturing Co. and Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. recently made offers to Chris-Craft Chairman Harsen Alfred Smith (TIME cover, May 18, 1959). This week the prize was won by NAFI Corp. (formerly National Automotive Fibres), which has diversified into oil and television. The price: $40 to $45 million in cash. NAFI is controlled by the Wall Street brokerage firm of Shields & Co., one of whose partners is famed Yachtsman Cornelius (“Corny”) Shields Sr. (TIME cover, July 27, 1953).

For Chris-Craft the sale marks the end of a family saga that began in 1894 when Chairman Smith’s grandfather installed a naphtha-gas engine in a homemade rowboat and began selling rides on the St.

Clair River at Algonac, Mich. Today, from its Pompano Beach, Fla. headquarters, Chris-Craft operates nine plants that produce more than 8,000 boats a year, from 17-ft. runabouts (at $3,335) to 66-ft. motor yachts ($160,000). In the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 1959, its sales to taled nearly $40 million with earnings of $2,500,000. Sales are running at a rate of more than $50 million a year. Smith will remain as chairman, along with the rest of Chris-Craft’s management. Wall Street speculated that NAFI would soon change its name to Chris-Craft and be so listed on the Stock Exchange.