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Larry Rand Wikipedia Page
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Lawrence Anthony “Larry” Rand (born November 19, 1942) is an American business executive and strategic communications counselor and an academic who in 1971 co-founded Kekst and Company, a New York corporate and financial communications firm. He is currently Senior Counsel to the firm after previously serving as Executive Chairman from 2012 -2014 and as President and Chief Executive Officer from 2008 to 2011. From its founding to 2008, he was Senior Vice President and a Director. In 2008, Kekst was sold to the French advertising and communications company, Publicis Groupe.[edit]
Early life and education
Larry Rand was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Shirley (Borenstein), a homemaker, and Gerald Melville Rand, a salesman. Larry is Jewish and traces his lineage to Germany. His great, great grandfather on his mother’s side, Neuman Harris Borenstein, was born in the USA in 1865. His grandparents on his father’s side were also born in the United States.
Throughout his early life, growing up in Brooklyn, Larry found work in summers pushing clothing racks in New York’s Garment Center (7thAvenue) and at the New York Times, where he was an elevator operator. Rand attended James Madison High School whose alumni include U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, U.S. Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
While at Madison, Rand played baseball and served as editor-in-chief of the school newspaper Madison Highway. With a circulation of about 8,000, the publication had a larger readership than many American commercial community newspapers. During Rand’s tenure as editor, the newspaper won several awards from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. In 1959, when Larry was 17 years old, the New York Post published an essay he had written in favor of continuing the New York State Regents Exams.
After Rand graduated from Madison in June of 1960, he continued his education at Brown University on a full scholarship. In his sophomore year, he became a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, where he was treasurer his junior year. Also while at Brown, Larry was a member of its Rugby Club, the Brown Youth Guidance program and the Cammarian Club an organization founded in 1894 and the oldest student government organization in country. He also wrote the book and lyrics for two Brownbrokers musical comedies, the student-produced theatre.
In June of 1964, Rand graduated from Brown with honors, earning a B.A. in American Civilization. Two months later, he married Madelon Leventhal, a fellow Madisonian. Also that year, Rand began studying history and economics at New York University on a full fellowship. He received a M.A. in 1965 and began working on a Ph.D. that combined economic theory with historical fact to understand how business and industry developed, an approach offered by very few institutions at the time. He received his doctorate in 1998 from NYU. His thesis examined the creation of the U.S. airline industry in the 1920s during the Hoover Administration.
1967 - 1971
Rand’s academic career was deferred when in 1967 he was recruited by the CIA to work at the Agency’s Langley Headquarters. After leaving the CIA, he and his wife returned to Brooklyn.
Larry joined public relations firm Ruder & Finn in 1968, where he was a senior executive for three years. While there, he met fellow communications strategist Gershon Kekst and in 1971, the two founded Kekst and Company.
Kekst and Company
In starting the firm, Kekst sought to create “a company or environment where there is an opportunity to do things that can change or significantly affect the course of public policy events.” [1]
Kekst and Company began with four clients: Itel Corporation of San Francisco, a capital equipment leasing company; Larwin, a Los Angeles based home building concern that also had two publicly traded REITs; Dymo Industries of San Francisco, a label-maker manufacturer; and Interdata of Long Branch NJ, which produced mini computers. The young firm was among the first corporate communications counseling firms to work with their clients on helping public companies tell their value creation theses directly to investors.
Kekst was also instrumental in advising clients on M&A strategies, and, in the early 1970s, the firm worked on several of the most noteworthy takeover contests, including the defense of Sterndent (“dubbed as the Jewish Dentist defense”), defending Mead Paper against a hostile bid from Occidental Petroleum, and defending McGraw-Hill against an unsolicited bid from American Express. [2]
On May 1, 1975, fixed brokerage commissions were abolished by the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. In Eric J. Weiner’s What Goes Up, the Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street, Rand explained how the model had worked prior to what became known as “Mayday.”
“The whole business of Wall Street was set up around fixed commissions. You had scads of these firms called research boutiques that did nothing but provide in-depth research on companies and stocks. H.C. Wainwright, Clark and Dodge, Mitchell Hutchins, these guys all sold ideas and got commissions based on those ideas. And for the most part they’re all out of business now. The research firms got paid with things called soft dollars, which wouldn’t have even existed without fixed commissions. Soft dollars were charges built into the commissions for services such as research, securities clearing, and stuff like that. As a customer, you had these soft dollars covered in your cost structure.
“Then you had the give-up. Give-ups worked like this: Say I’m a mutual fund manager and you’re a Wall Street firm, and I’m going to give you an order for a million shares of AT&T. Well, I don’t think my commission rate should be as high as that of the little old lady who’s buying 50 shares of AT&T. Since you want my business, you agree to give me back, or ‘give up,’ a percentage of the commission on my order. It’s a rebate, an extremely thinly veiled way of negotiating the commission rate with a few select customers without directly changing the rate. And as a major customer I could also direct you to pay a portion of your commission to the research boutique or broker who gave me the investment idea. That was another type of give-up.”[3]
In September of 1975, Kekst issued a monograph co-authored by Rand and a Kekst partner, Robert Siegfried, on the projected impact of Mayday. The report, entitled “Mayday, the Capital Markets and Corporate Communications,” predicted far-ranging repercussions, including “Those companies which are liquid and which have the support of the investment community would be able to acquire the assets of those companies not able to achieve capital growth on their own. Likewise, in order to be in a position of capital strength and out of a fear of being acquired, many more companies in the near future will begin merging. The effect of this scenario would ultimately be a reduction in business competition and an increase of unfriendly takeovers.”
The report’s conclusion stated “In light of Mayday and the trend in the capital markets, how effectively business communicates to the investment community becomes more crucial than ever….Indeed it is now up to the individual company to fill much of the marketing void that has been created in the securities industry….With brokerage firm research becoming more limited, the burden is now on the company to make its impact on the potential investor.” [4]
Throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, Kekst advised on more M&A transactions than any other PR consultancy, referred to as “the communications firm that has been behind the scenes of some of the biggest takeovers in history,” in the New York Times5] Among the more noteworthy takeover battles that Rand worked on including the successful defense of Gulf Oil from Boone Pickens’ Mesa Petroleum, later reported in Harper’s:
“It was the Friday morning before Yom Kippur when Larry Rand received a call from a banker in the mergers and acquisitions department of Salomon Brothers, the investment bankers. Could Rand, the banker asked, meet with some people from Gulf Oil, an important Salomon client, that noon at the Union League Club? Rand's schedule was tight; with the Holy Days coming, he planned to be home before sundown, and the atmosphere at the venerable old club was rarely conducive to haste. "They think," said the banker, "that they've got a Boone Pickens problem." Rand said he'd be right over.
“Larry Rand is director and senior vice president of Kekst and Company, a firm that specializes in corporate public relations. He is not the person a company normally calls the moment its stock becomes the subject of a raid. But Rand possessed unique knowledge: he and his senior partner, Gershon Kekst, had encountered Boone Pickens before, most recently at KN Energy, a Colorado-based natural gas and pipeline company that, it was widely believed, Pickens was even now subjecting to a so-called greenmail raid. In a greenmail raid, a speculator assumes a powerful position in a company's stock (that is, he buys quite a lot of it); then lets it be known (or, if he is clever, allows the company's management to assume over his strenuous but purposely unconvincing denials) that he is planning an unfriendly takeover that will involve a purge of the executive suite; then allows himself to be bought out at a handsome premium by the officers thus panicked. Pickens was believed to be a master of this lively but difficult art, and Rand seemed just the person to describe Pickens's method of operation. Rand was more than willing to do so, but he had another message for Gulf. "You people," he warned, "have a terrible reputation on Wall Street." [6]
Other high profile clients Rand advised on M & A activity include Ronald Perelman’s successful takeover of Revlon, a “greenmail attempt” by Donald Trump against Federated Department Stores, as well as many friendly mergers that took place in the energy industry such as Conoco and Philips Petroleum; BP and SOHIO, and in the airline industry, including TWA by American Airlines, Frontier Airlines by Continental. [7] More recently, he worked on the United Air Lines merger with Continental, and the American Airlines-USAir merger.
While Rand rarely comments on his role in clients’ deals, his involvement in the 1989 Time-Warner transaction was reported in the New York Times.
“Earlier in the day, the Kekst firm, working its contacts in the financial community, had learned that Martin S. Davis, the C.E.O. of Paramount Communications, was likely to announce a tender offer for Time, a Kekst client, jeopardizing Time's proposed merger with Warner Communications. For Rand, who was representing Time, Inc. and for Gershon Kekst who was handling Warner Communications, the telephone call marked the start of a long month.
“The order of battle was soon established. Jonathan Rinehart, the C.E.O. of Adams & Rinehart, joined the fray as Paramount's public relations adviser. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-American press baron and a client of the publicist Howard J. Rubenstein, hovered over the contenders, waiting to see if any interesting property fell by the wayside.
''On June 15,'' Rand says, ''Gershon and I put in an all-nighter at the clients', from 10 in the morning to 2 the following morning.'' The Time and Warner boards were meeting separately to consider their response to Paramount's bid. ''Gershon and I were right outside the respective board rooms. Time decided to tender for Warner, which was a major and dangerous decision because they put a price tag on the company.'' The risk was that Warner would be put in play. For Rand and Kekst, the primary tasks were to clarify the language of the announcement and of the shareholder letters and arrange for media coverage. And when the press interviews were conducted, Rand says, ''Gershon and/or I were present.''
Although the $14 billion Time-Warner deal captured its share of headlines and made substantial demands on the resources of the Kekst organization, it was far from being the most difficult assignment the firm had undertaken. In the often ruthless and invariably complex world of corporate mergers and acquisitions, Kekst is widely regarded as the public relations firm of choice - a major player in such celebrated struggles as T. Boone Pickens vs. Gulf Oil, Philip Morris vs. Kraft, and Grand Met vs. Pillsbury. [8]
In Persuasori e persuasi by Italian journalists Paolo Glisenti and Roberto Pesenti, Rand commented on the far-reaching implications of the Time-Warner deal, in the context of corporate takeovers.
“The history of American journalism will always bear the mark of what happened that day in March [when Time, Inc. and Warner Communications announced their planned merger.] I personally witnessed the enactment, down to the ultimate act of courage and sacrifice, of the teachings of Henry Luce: strict separation between ‘Church’ and ‘State’, between shareholders and journalists. That day it was the editorial side that decided that silence would be the best insurance against the dangers of potential conflicts of interest. My personal opinion is that it was a mistake. But, who can say what would have happened otherwise, and who can predict now what will happen in American journalism?
“Today you have to think in terms of total globalization. The publishing companies of the future will be those that have no nationality, that wave no country’s flag, and that operate in very nation as citizens of the world. Companies without country of origin or residence, that sell information and communications like commodities, basic products suitable for all uses and tastes. That is what Time-Warner will be.”[9]
Kekst and Rand became the leading advisers for companies dealing with potentially hostile investors – from contests for control to “bear raids” and “greenmail” to pressure for governance changes, as well as advising companies in developing and implementing communications strategies for companies on both sides of unsolicited transactions. The firm also expanded its practice into crisis communications and bankruptcy communications, as well as litigation support.
Among such activity was Rand’s work with Enron in 2001, described by New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald in his book Conspiracy of Fools.
“The barrage of bad news was killing the company. Every day the management team waited for the Journal’s call, to hear what was really happening in their own company.
“[Enron’s head of corporate communications, Mark] Palmer consulted with Larry Rand, a public relations expert with the firm Kekst and Company. Rand’s advice was strong: Enron should launch its own investigation, hiring top-flight lawyers to find out what Fastow had been up to all these years. Rand even suggested a name: Bill McLucas, former head of SEC enforcement, who was now a partner at the firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering.” [10].
Subsequent to the Enron scandal, the Securities and Exchange Commission expanded the list of events that companies have to disclose. Rand began advising companies on the dissemination of news material to the stock of publicly-traded companies. Dow Jones newswire reported on Rand’s views on the nuances involved in disclosure.
"It's not easy to take a one-size-fits-all approach," said Lawrence Rand, a senior partner at Kekst & Co., a New York corporate communications firm. "It has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis." Still, he allowed, a company does have to balance family and individual privacy interests with the executive's fiduciary responsibilities to employees, customers and owners.
Kekst helped Tenneco with its shareholder communications and advocated the company's openness when it came to disclosing the health of its CEO, who had an inoperable brain tumor. But the firm has also worked with other companies where a different conclusion was reached. Of primary importance, he said, is ensuring the board is kept up to speed and that directors’ plan for succession in a worst-case scenario. However, in situations where disclosing such information as the health of a senior member of management, and premature disclosure might have an unnecessarily destabilizing effect, the firm has advised the opposite tack, he said. At one company he declined to name, a CEO underwent a relatively routine surgical procedure, which was to keep him sidelined for several weeks, so Rand advised against a public disclosure. "It didn't destabilize the company. All the major executives knew and the board was aware of it," Rand said. [11] Rand later said that when the CEO was back at work, full time, it was disclosed that he had taken a temporary leave of absence for medical reasons. There was no negative feedback nor any stock market reaction.
Rand has been a frequent contributor to public discourse on the changing financial landscape, such as the implications of Regulation FD and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In 2006, Rand issued a report entitled “To Guide or Not to Guide?” examining the practice of public companies issuing “earnings guidance,” which stated "A company cannot relieve itself of the market's short-term expectations by ending the practice of corporate guidance." To discourage excessive focus on the short-term, Rand “would have companies consider offering guidance on an annual basis but with quarterly updates.” [12]
In July 2008, Publicis acquired the privately-held Kekst, to have the firm and its brand work side by side with Publicis’ public relations firm, MSL Group, but retaining the firm’s well-known name. Olivier Fleurot, CEO of MSL, says the company was impressed by the firm’s expertise in the corporate communications and financial PR space, as well as its access to high-level executives. “We see them as very high level consultants who talk to board members, the C-suite and can really be strategic advisors,” added Fleurot. [13].
Larry was called upon for just such strategic advice that summer by long-time client Anheuser-Busch, as described in Dethroning The King by Julie McIntosh.
“Because InBev was a foreign brewer looking to gobble up an iconic American company, the executives also knew they needed to get cracking immediately on a public relations strategy. [Anheuser-Busch General Counsel]Randy Baker put in a call to Lawrence Rand, a longtime partner at New York public relations firm Kekst and Company, who had been working with Anheuser-Busch behind the scenes for years in preparation for just this sort of event. Kekst advised a high-powered roster of companies and investment firms on how to handle public exposure, and it specialized in takeovers. The firm would need to brief Anheuser’s internal PR staff on how to handle the situation, help them prepare materials for employees, shareholders, and the media, and start figuring out which buttons to push with politicians and community organizations. [14]
Rand’s relationship with Anheuser-Busch was one of many that resulted from Kekst and Company’s history with Joseph Flom, a partner of New York-based giant corporate law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Flom, a legend among Wall Street lawyers, was also a decades-long friend and mentor to Kekst and Rand.
Larry is a member of the Business Advisory Council of Pro Publica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.
Academic Career
Larry is an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Stern Graduate School of Business and is a Visiting Professor of Economics at Brown University.
Previously, Larry taught American history at New York University in 1964 through 1966 while he was working on his graduate degrees, and upon his return from Washington, D.C., he taught at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1968. Rand also has served on the faculty of the Practising Law Institute
Philanthropy
Rand is active in a number of projects on behalf of Brown University, having served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Brown Annual Fund, and has co-chaired several of his class’s reunions. In 1999, he was awarded Brown’s Ittelson Prize for his contributions to the University. He was also Vice Chairman of the University’s Campaign for Academic Enrichment, and is a member of Brown’s Media Relations Advisory Council. He also serves as a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and on the Chairman’s Council of the New-York Historical Society, an institution that published one of his academic writings.
Rand is a founder and former Chairman of the Board (1987-1992) and remains an Honorary Trustee of The ALS Association, a non-profit healthcare organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. In 1997, he was awarded the Jacob Javits Lifetime Achievement Award and The Rand Prize was established in his honor, an annual award presented to individuals or organizations that have helped ALS patients and their families. For more than 20 years, he has chaired the Annual Lou Gehrig Sports Award Benefit Dinner in New York, where millions of dollars have been raised for ALS research and patient services. Through monies raised at that event, the ALS Association has been able to open two clinics, one at New York Hospital and another at Beth Israel Hospital in NY, and underwrite the Genome Center at Columbia University.
In 2016, Rand spearheaded a fundraising effort that is underwriting a study at Harvard Chan School of Public Health that is investigating the role of polyunsaturated fats (PUFA) and the risk of ALS. A preliminary finding, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) indicated that the intake of PUFA may prevent and/or slow down the progression of the disease.
Also, in 2016, Rand funded a post-doctoral fellowship at the Neurosciences Center at the Brigham and Women’s Medical Center. TheRand Fellowship will allow a qualified MD/Ph.D to continue studies in such neurological diseases as Parkinsons, MS, and ALS, among others.
Rand is also the former Chairman of the Board of the USTA Foundation, the non-profit, charitable arm of the United States Tennis Association, where he also served as Chairman of its Grants Committee. He is a former member of the board of New York-Presbyterian United Hospital Medical Center (Port Chester, NY).
Politics
Larry was Chairman of the Village of Rye Brook (NY) Ethics Board since the Board’s founding in 1993 until 2000, when he resigned in order to run for the Board of Trustees, the Village’s governing body. He served as Trustee from 2000-2002, at which time he was asked to chair the Village’s Firehouse Construction Committee (2002-2004). In 2004, Larry was elected Mayor of Rye Brook, an office he held for two terms before not seeking re-election.
While Mayor, Rand re-wrote the Village’s ethics code [15] and helped secure a $400,000 reimbursement of a claim from the New York State Environmental Protection and Spill Compensation Fund. The funds were used for capital expenditures and investment in Rye Brook’s infrastructure. [16] Rand also led an initiative to create the Rye Brook Athletic Fields. [17] The New York Times also profiled Rand’s leadership in prohibiting the growth of “McMansions” in the Village. [18]
In 2008, he was appointed a member of the Westchester County (NY) Board of Ethics, which he served on for four years.
Personal life[edit]
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Larry has three children with his first wife, the late Madelon Leventhal, a Professor of English at Brooklyn College. They were married for 47 years until her death, on April 25, 2011, from ALS the same disease that took the lives of his father-in-law and sister-in-law. [19] He married Tiina Bougas Smith on December 23, 2013 [20] and is the stepfather to Tiina’s three children.
References
1. “Newsmaker: Lawrence Rand,” by Kimberly Maul, PR Week, November 2010
http://www.prweek.com/article/1265930/newsmaker-lawrence-rand-ceo-kekst-co
2. Corporate Control Alert
3. What Goes Up, the Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen, Eric J. Weiner, Little, Brown and Company, 2005
4. “Mayday, the Capital Markets and Corporate Communications,” September 1975, by Larry Rand and Robert Siegfried
5. “Kekst & Co. Names Rand as Chief Executive,” Dealbook, New York Times, July 30, 2010
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/kekst-co-names-rand-as-chief-executive/
6. “The Biggest Knockover,” by L.J. (Lawrence J.) Davis, Harper’s Magazine, January, 1985
http://harpers.org/archive/1985/01/the-biggest-knockover/
7. Mergermarket; Corporate Control Alert
8. “Image-Makers In Takeover Land” by L.J. Davis, The New York Times, September 24, 1989[edit]
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/magazine/image-makers-in-takeover-land.html?pagewanted=all
9. Persuasori e persuasi, P. Glisenti and R. Pesenti, Laterza & Figli, 1990
10. Conspiracy of Fools, Kurt Eichenwald, Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc. 2005
11. “Disclosing Execs' Illness Still A Difficult Diagnosis,” By Phyllis Plitch, 28 May 2004, rDowJones Commodity Wire
12. “A Misguided Strategy,” by Gene Epstein, Barrons February 19, 2007
13. “Newsmaker: Lawrence Rand,” by Kimberly Maul, PR Week, November 2010
http://www.prweek.com/article/1265930/newsmaker-lawrence-rand-ceo-kekst-co
14. Dethroning The King, Julie McIntosh, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011
15. “Rand won't seek re-election,” Westmore News, December 27, 2007[edit]
http://www.westmorenews.com/Content/zArchives/Archives/Article/Rand-won-t-seek-re-election/22/70/5742
16. “Village to get $400,000 from state for oil cleanup,” Westmore News, February 22, 2007[edit]
http://www.westmorenews.com/Content/zArchives/Archives/Article/Village-to-get-400-000-from-state-for-oil-cleanup/22/70/3092
17. “It’s Game Time at New R.B. Fields,” by Jeff Benzak, Westmore News, Thursday, September 21, 2006
http://www.westmorenews.com/Content/zArchives/Archives/Article/It-s-game-time-at-new-R-B-fields/22/70/1814
18. “Village to Impose Limits on McMansions,” by David Scharfenberg, The New York Times, October 1, 2006
19. “Madelon Leventhal Rand, 68, lost her year and a half battle with Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” ALS Association, April 26, 2011[edit]
http://www.alsa.org/news/archive/madelon-rand-loses-battle.html
20. Tiina Smith and Lawrence Rand, Weddings/Celebrations, New York Times, December 29, 2013[edit]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/fashion/weddings/tiina-smith-and-lawrence-rand.html?_r=0
External Links
http://www.kekst.com/
Categories: Larry Rand, 1942 births, 20th-century American businesspeople, 21st-century American businesspeople, American business pioneers, American people of Jewish descent, businesspeople from New York, Brown University alumni, People from Brooklyn, New York
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/magazine/image-makers-in-takeover-land.html?pagewanted=all