United Merchants and Manufacturers Inc history

Company assets were given as $24.3 million in 1930.

By 1935 UM&M had net sales of nearly $35 million and had acquired a silk- and rayon-weaving plant in Louiseville, Quebec.

The company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange by 1940.

Jacob Schwab was one of the highest-paid executives in the United States, earning $440,542 in 1946.

In 1964 UM&M was among the five largest domestic producers of fiberglass industrial fabrics to be charged by the United States Justice Department with conspiring with distributors and each another to fix prices and rig bids.

Another troubling figure was the $226 million in long-term debt, about 43 percent of the company's total capital and a sharp rise from $99 million in 1966.

It was the largest business insoivency since the W. T. Grant Company's bankruptcy action in October 1975, a move followed by the company's liquidation six months later.

By mid-1977, however, UM&M, still hemorrhaging, had omitted its quarterly dividend and two of its debt securities had been downgraded by Moody's Investor Service.

In June 1978, the end of its fiscal year, UM&M emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy on schedule--the biggest company ever to do so--having deposited $195.9 million to cover initial payments to creditors and other expenses.

Eventually the group's holdings were sold to Uzi Ruskin, a citizen of both the United States and Israel who became a company director in 1980.

The worst of these was Jonathan Logan Inc., purchased in a 1984 hostile takeover for $195 million.

In 1988--89 he sold the fiberglass-fabrics division, a shoe-and-handbag division, and part of the home-furnishings group.

He raised more than $100 million, but in fiscal 1989 the company still carried an operating loss of $29 million.

The restructuring agreement ending bankruptcy had required the company to reduce its debt to CIT to $88 million by the end of 1992, but UM&M still owed about $95 million at year's end.

Ruskin owned or controlled 6.5 percent of the common stock in September 1994, while Menachem Atzmon controlled 32.2 percent.