Leonard M. Levie is the founder and chairman of American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC). An eternal optimist, has always believed that every cloud has a silver lining, provided that you look hard enough for it. His team at AIAC has rapidly develop and implement the key operational and financial actions to revitalize struggling manufacturing and distribution businesses.
Businesses that are on the verge of falling apart often close down because they don’t have sufficient human and financial capital to develop and execute an effective turnaround plan. This typically results in the loss of hundreds and, sometimes, thousands of jobs for contractors and skilled and unskilled laborers, which can impact an entire community.
Over the past quarter century, AIAC has identified, acquired, and turned around a large collection of underperforming manufacturing and acquisition companies located on four continents.
One of the most dramatic examples where Leonard M. Levie and his team at AIAC have saved a declining businesses include the case of Craft Paper Industries Ltd.:
Tolko Industries, a multi-billion dollar revenue, privately held, timber, paper & pulp mill group based in Canada, announced the closure of its kraft paper manufacturing facility located in The Pas, Manitoba, Canada, located 835 miles northeast of Minneapolis, MN in August 2016. As a result of the impending closure, 300 woodland contractors and 330 union employees faced immediate unemployment. Despite this crisis, which the national Canadian media declared to be a hopeless situation, Mr. Levie saw an interesting opportunity for the revival and revitalization of the business and purchased the mill just three weeks before the announced shutdown date.
Before the acquisition, the paper mill had negligible paper orders along with a fleeing customer and supplier base. But less than 1 year after its acquisition, the mill, rebranded as Canadian Kraft Paper Industries Ltd., started humming again. Today, the mill profitably produces and exports worldwide the highest quality grades of kraft paper for a myriad of blue chip corporate clients. AIAC accomplished this by designing and implementing a bold turnaround plan which combined revenue enhancement, cost containment, massive equipment investment.
The dramatic saga of Canadian Kraft Paper Industry is hardly unique for AIAC. This turnaround story is repeated at dozens of other AIAC companies, including Champlain Cable, Titanium Fabrication, Euro foil, Arn prior Aerospace, Super Alloy Manufacturing, Vermont Aerospace, Be Link, Malaga Aerospace, Bradford Space, Neotiss, D2A, Shiro Group, Avara Pharmaceuticals, Combiwear Parts, Consolidated Industries, Craft Machine Works, Epalia, Forte Micro, IP3 Plastics, Lenape Forged Products, MG, Umbilical International, and Union Metals. Each has a similar story to tell. Each of these companies was universally regarded by their industry and community as hopelessly insolvent, unprofitable, and unfixable. Each was turned around by the AIAC turnaround team. AIAC operates like a combination of a close knit family and a vigorous university debating society. The Socratic method prevails. Turnaround target companies’core operational and financial issues, and the appropriate turnaround action steps to address them are endlessly discussed internally before an acceptably high probability turnaround strategy is set. All opinions are welcome and passions run high. New information on the target company’s products, markets, customers, supplier is instantly considered, and hotly debated. Turnaround strategies are immediately adjusted, and 180 degree pivots in strategic direction are often the result. The plan is then implemented by selected AIAC turnaround executives, based on their specific track record, geographic location, and language skills.
No one attempting such corporate high wire acts is perfect, and enduring the unrelenting ire of disappointed stake holders is part of the job description. In such cases, stones are hurled by local press and politicians. This is particularly true when a turnaround necessarily requires a strategic, surgical divestment or dissolution of a non-viable-subsidiary, in order to save a much larger core, parent business which supports thousands of jobs. Turnaround managers at AIAC know that designing and implementing a revitalization plan that saves the most jobs is as important as transforming losses into profits.
AIAC’s turnaround track record is stunning, with an enviable 25 year, global win/loss ratio rumored to be 20 to 1. This has produced a compounded annual return on invested capital that is unadvertised and closely guarded. AIAC has never raised capital from limited partners and has no plans to do so. AIAC now consists of 78 manufacturing and distribution sites in 24 countries on 4 continents.
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