Loida Nicolas Lewis is on a roll. She has just won another $10 in a friendly wager with a colleague. After gleefully waving the crinkled bill in the air as though it were a winning lottery ticket, she ceremoniously places it inside a picture frame with six other flattened, face-up sawbucks. "He didn't think I could negotiate a lower lease, so I told him to put up or shut up," gloats Lewis. "They all second-guessed me, but I haven't lost a bet yet."
As chairman of TLC Beatrice International Holdings, which has the odd distinction of being America's largest minority-owned enterprise without having any U.S. businesses, Lewis has made a habit of defying the odds. Following the death in January 1993 of her husband Reginald (Reg) Lewis--the African-American tycoon who demolished the Wall Street color line in 1987 by buying Beatrice International for $1 billion--it was widely assumed that his widow would remain secluded as majority shareholder and silent partner.
She didn't. In December 1993, two hours before the struggling firm's year-end board meeting convened, Lewis telephoned her brother-in-law Jean Fugett Jr., then chairman and chief executive officer. The message was short and simple: "Jean, I'm taking over." With more than 50% of the stock in her hands, Loida got what Loida wanted, which was a European snack-food and grocery business mired in debt. The smart money on Wall Street thought the inexperienced Lewis would surely flop.
She didn't. Instead Lewis has surprised skeptics, including investors, by guiding TLC Beatrice with just as much spunk and savvy as her high-profile spouse did. Despite zero management experience and little firsthand knowledge of the global food business, this immigration lawyer and mother of two led the money-losing conglomerate through a perilous economy and a painful downsizing. She recharged Beatrice's slumping operations, restored its credibility--and credit rating--on Wall Street and returned the company to the black. After reporting its first significant profit in three years in 1994, TLC Beatrice continues to improve the bottom line, although earnings are still wobbly. "I have no idea how she did it," says David Wells, an investment analyst at Bear Stearns & Co. "Maybe it was hidden talent, or just plain luck, or even some special gene--some kind of Lewis thing."
As it turns out, that "Lewis thing" may be the only business trait she and her husband shared. Reg was a brash Harvard-trained lawyer who became the richest African American in U.S. history through ruthless ambition and sheer willpower; Loida is scholarly and low key, the author of three textbooks, and deeply religious. She is perhaps the only CEO of a multinational company who greets visitors with a hug rather than a handshake. He smoked power-broker cigars, traveled in a custom jet and kept a Louis XIV-style office suite in Paris as a pit stop. She finds little use for such captain-of-industry trappings. After consolidating power, the wealthy widow sold off the limousines and the private jet and dispensed with other perks. While Reg was a master of complex financing, Loida keeps a chalkboard near her desk, on which she writes down the names of individual managers along with their assigned tasks, erasing each entry as the job is completed. Says a Beatrice executive: "I can't imagine Reginald Lewis doing that."