Piper Industries history

In 1949, as the great 16-year postwar bull market began, Piper Jaffray opened a new office in Billings, Montana.

Although it would take them a while to develop, they finally released their first twin-engine, all-metal aircraft in 1954, the Piper Apache.

The company built a research manufacturing facility at a naval airbase in Vero Beach, Florida, in 1957.

The PA-28 Cherokee, which went into production at the company's expanded Vero Beach manufacturing facilities in January 1961, was to be one of the company's most successful designs.

The PA-32 Cherokee Six, introduced in 1965, was the earliest derivative and featured a stretched cabin with room for six people and an additional door in the rear.

Another twin-engine plane, the PA-31 Navajo, was introduced in 1967 specifically as a business aircraft.

In 1968 Piper Jaffray acquired the Wausau, Wisconsin-based over-the-counter (OTC) securities firm Altenburg & Gooding and a year later&mdash Harry Piper, Jr., became Jaffray's chairman and CEO--the company opened an OTC trading office in New York.

By 1969, however, Piper would undergo significant change after the purchase of a controlling interest in Piper by Bangor Punta Corporation.

By 1970, the company had produced 80,000 planes (24,000 of them Piper Cubs); one in every four general aviation planes was a Piper.

In 1971, therefore, it held its first public stock offering, raising some $5.7 million, which during the next decade helped it acquire the faltering securities giant Goodbody & Company as well as firms in Minnesota, Iowa, and the Pacific Northwest.

In July 1972 Piper Jaffray endured much unwelcome publicity when Harry Piper's wife, Virginia, was kidnapped by an unknown group demanding $1 million in ransom.

Although the recession of 1973--74 pummeled Piper Jaffray's bottom line and stock, its newly enlarged Corporate Finance department began to establish a profitable new business for the firm--mergers and acquisitions (M&A). By the end of the decade Piper's M&A activity exceeded $760 million.

In 1974 Piper Jaffray reorganized itself into a public holding company, Piper Jaffray Inc., which became the parent company of the operational broker/dealer business, Piper, Jaffray & Hopwood.

In 1977, Bangor Punta Corp., a $500 million conglomerate, won out over Chris-Craft Industries Inc., known for making yachts.

In 1978 Piper Jaffray continued its tradition of technological innovation by installing the $4 million "Piper Pipeline," an electronic information and stock monitoring system that gave its customers the same real-time access to Wall Street data as the most sophisticated Manhattan brokerage.

When it attempted to raise capital for the ESOT through six public stock offerings, however, some of its shareholders claimed Piper Jaffray's offer price was too low and sued (a jury ruled in their favor in 1981).

1983: The Malibu is introduced.

Lear Siegler Inc. bought Piper from Bangor Punta for $290 million in February 1984.

The firm moved into the new 42-story Piper Jaffray Tower in 1985 and in October of the same year opened a new "Piper Capital Management" operation to offer mutual funds and manage the money of pension funds, public asset funds, and large individual accounts.

On Black Monday, October 22, 1987, the Dow Jones index dropped a stomach-churning 508 points, wiping out an estimated $500 billion in market value in the span of seven hours.

Within eight months Capital Management's portfolio had grown to more than $125 million in assets and by mid-1988 to almost $1.5 billion.

Industry-wide sales were just 1,143 planes in 1989, and Piper's main competitors Cessna and Beech Aircraft had stopped making small piston engine planes.

Most of the company's 1,600 employees were furloughed in February 1990 as rumors of bankruptcy circulated.

The firm went bankrupt in July 1991.

In 1992 Piper Jaffray ranked as the fifth largest security underwriter in the nation and before the year was out it had added securities firms in Kansas City and San Francisco to its roster of strategic acquisitions.

In September 1993, a bankruptcy judge ruled that the Swiss company's $45 million offer would not be enough to pay debts and set up a trust fund for Piper's potential claimants.

In 1994, however, a little understood investment vehicle known as derivatives dealt a serious blow to Piper Jaffray's fortunes.

Suma became CEO in early 1995 after Douglass was forced out of the position over a questionable stock transaction, reported Florida Trend.

In fiscal 1996, ended September 30, the company posted revenue of $553.9 million and net income of $7.29 million.

In October 1997 the last class action lawsuit was settled for $24 million.