home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=91TT2670>
- <title>
- Dec. 02, 1991: American Notes:The Boardroom
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Dec. 02, 1991 Pearl Harbor:Day of Infamy
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 29
- American Notes
- THE BOARDROOM
- A Chairman At Large
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Lots of companies are suffering from vanishing profits, but
- Cascade International has a far more embarrassing problem: a
- missing chairman. The Florida-based retailer's founder and
- chief executive, Victor Incendy, disappeared last week, two days
- before a scheduled meeting at which he had promised to reply to
- accusations that his clothes-and-cosmetics empire was built on
- phantom stores and phony figures. The episode is a bizarre end
- to the spectacular seven-year rise of Cascade, which had
- regularly reported annual sales gains of 40% or more from a
- chain of stores with such names as Boutiques Allison and Fran's
- Fashions.
- </p>
- <p> Touted by the charismatic Incendy, an immigrant from
- Hungary, Cascade gained a reputation as one of Wall Street's hot
- over-the-counter stocks. But during the past year, Cascade's
- glowing financial self-portrait began to arouse skepticism.
- Although the company claimed to have 29 stores in California,
- a search by a financial newsletter turned up only 18. Officials
- are looking for Incendy, and an outside auditor is currently
- going over the company's books, which even Cascade concedes "may
- not be accurate."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-