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¶ John Erik Jonsson, 58, chairman of Texas Instruments Inc., was not worth very much money only seven years ago—and neither was his company, specializing in geophysical work for oil companies. The stock sold for $5.13 a share. Then he began to pick up companies, entered the military electronics field with transistors and other electronic devices. Last week the company's stock sold at 214.75. Jonsson now owns stock worth $82 million. His associates have done nearly as well: Texins' executive committee chairman, Eugene McDermott, owns shares worth $65 million and President Patrick E. Haggerty shares worth $26 million. They and other top executives have given away nearly 70,000 shares to educational institutions.
¶ Leo and David Bakalar, chairman and president of Transitron Electronic Corp. of Wakefield, Mass., have run up a stock fortune of $307 million (another $34.4 million has been realized in cash) on an initial investment of $200,000 made by Leo, 47, a plastics manufacturer at the time. The investment was backing for an improved gold-bonded diode developed by David, 35, who has a Ph.D. from M.I.T. Since then, the company has grabbed 10% of the semiconductor market (second among independents only to Tex as Instruments), last fiscal year ran up sales of $30.9 million, which the Bakalar brothers expect to jump to $45 million-$50 million in the fiscal year just ended.
¶Charles Bates ("Tex") Thornton, president of Beverly Hills Litton Industries, was an Army Air Corps colonel at 28, the planning director of Ford Motor Co. at 32, the operating boss of Hughes Air craft at 35. At 47, he is a hard-working executive worth $37 million in 443,024 shares of Litton stock. It all started when he quit Hughes in the exodus of brains (TIME, Oct. 5, 1953), started his own company, which is one of the fastest-grow ing electronics firms (1959 sales: $125 million), claims to be the biggest U.S. manufacturer of desk calculating machines.
Growth companies have not only created a new breed of management millionaires but have added some hefty figures to existing fortunes. Millionaire Laurance Rockefeller, a backer of Bos ton's Itek Corp. and its biggest stock holder, bought 259,765 shares at an average cost of $1.41. His present 195,197 shares in the company, now discussing a merger with Chicago's Seebring Corp., were worth $12 million last week. More than 1,100 Texas Instruments employees, buying stock under a special purchase plan, have spent just over a million and a half for stock now worth more than $6,000,000. The stock of one $3,600-a-year employee last year added $5,525 to its value.
Wall Street's Lehman Brothers has been one of the biggest floaters of growth stocks (Litton, Beckman, etc.). At first, most other big Wall Street houses showed little interest in the field. Smaller houses with low overhead and a hungry eye stepped in. Says Belmont Towbin of C.E. Unterberg, Towbin: "We've made 30 to 40 millionaires"—including himself. Wealth has worked no great change in the lives of most of the new executive millionaires. They are a new breed too interested either in their companies or in scientific research to indulge themselves with their new fortunes. Arnold Beckman and his wife, for example, still live in an Altadena house he built in 1933 while teaching at Caltech.