SAIC to Founder: Nuts
from
January/February 2007
by Bonnie Azab Powell
The giant defense contractor Science Applications International Corp. finally pushed its initial public offering out of the chute, 13 months after the employee-owned company first filed its intent to go public. SAIC netted $1.2 billion after underwriting commissions. The stock opened at $15 and reached a high of $18.24 before settling back to the upper $17's—a hale and healthy debut, according to market-watchers. In mid- November, the stock was at about $20.
That gave SAIC a market capitalization of $7 billion, and no curbs on its appetite for acquisitions. Employees, who split a $2.5 billion pre-IPO dividend, retain 98% of the voting rights.
What does all this mean to company founder and former chairman and CEO J. Robert Beyster, 82, who once observed that "one of the surest ways to destroy a company is to take it public" (
"A Company Tom Clancy Would Love," September/October 2002
)? "I suspect that I should not comment," writes the man known to all as Dr. B, answering a question on his blog. "I was not at the bell-ringing on Wall Street, but it seemed to me that everything went pretty well."
