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By the time World War II came, AVCO was ready to produce. The AVCO family did a superb job. Out of the plants spread-eagled across the U.S. (see chart), AVCO poured an amazing array of products: B-24 bombers, aircraft carriers, a battleship (the South Dakota), marine engines, aircraft engines and parts. In four years the AVCO family turned out more than $4,000,000,000 worth of products. This week the fast-growing empire contracted in one place only so that it could expand in another. The big question was whether AVCO, which had grown great in war, could turn itself into a sort of General Motors in peace.
The Dealer. The man who would write the answer to this question was the nimble-witted master of high finance who had turned AVCO into an honest woman: Victor Emanuel, 48, the flamboyant chairman of the board of AVCO (at $103,400 a year). Suave, swart V.E. (as his associates call him) has a full, flushed face, sleek black hair, a full-lipped smile and a full, round voice; he looks and sounds rather like a serious Jack Benny. He usually clothes himself in pinstriped, double-breasted suits, black shoes, large flowered ties—and a dark air of mystery. He rarely gives interviews, permits no press pictures (most newspaper morgues have only one formal photo of him), keeps in the shadowy background. The mysterious air is partly only his manner. As one friend said: "He'll whisper something in your ear in strictest confidence and you'll walk out and find it in the newspaper."
But it is not only an air: even in Wall Street V.E. is not well known, and there are a score of conflicting opinions about him. Said one Wall Streeter: "He has the most brilliant mind in the U.S." Another: "He's the master of flops." Actually, V.E.'s quick-fingered juggling of billions in the last 18 years has had results both dazzling and dismal. His whole life has been a series of intricate deals based on his guiding principle: "It is easier to take over a going business than to establish one."
His other favorite maxim is: "Never buck a trend." That was one reason he wanted to get rid of Convair. He was certain that, without big war orders to shore them up, there were too many U.S. plane companies, and that only a few big ones could survive. Convair and Lockheed would do better together, thanks to savings on management, engineering, etc., than they would alone.
Sometimes, in his comfortable office in the Graybar Building, surrounded by his hunting prints, he works 16 hours a day, often seven days a week. Sometimes there are so many deals a-sizzling that even V.E. can hardly keep them straight. Often, when he finds his right hand up to something that would hurt a deal being maneuvered by his left hand, he cries: "Oh, God, the duality of ownership."
This financial multiplicity is even harder on V.E.'s associates. AVCO has one man whose sole job is to keep track of its corporate tangle. Last week he collapsed from the strain.