Five years after replacing John Campbell as president of Pacific Lumber, PL president and CEO Robert Manne is leaving Maxxam/PL. Campbell was with PL when Maxxam took over the company in 1985, and things have certainly changed since then. The past five years have been a time of major change, as Maxxam clearly is designing their end game for Pacific Lumber and their holdings of redwood forest on the north coast.
Particularly since major refinancing in 1998, keeping the purchase debt at extraordinarily high levels, and the Headwaters Deal in 1999, with most of the cash from that lucrative deal going to Houston (Maxxam), the strategy of extracting the MAXimum (profits and assets) has been accelerated. While the rate of logging has slowed some, because of long overdue scrutiny by the Water Quality agency, and most directly due to 20 years of extreme over-cutting, the business plan carried out by those in charge has left a legacy of grossly depleted resources and a company so burdened with debt that a return to sustainable logging is made tremendously difficult, if not impossible. Manne has overseen that business plan the past five years, and has had an attack dog approach to those protesting the over-logging as well, filing harassment lawsuits against tree-sitters and protesters.
Manne's resignation comes just days after PL made an interest payment due in July by selling of some of their property, staving off corporate bankruptcy at least for the time being. His replacement, George O'Brien, comes from timber giant International Paper Co.
International Paper (IP) is the largest pulp and paper corporation in the world, the largest private owner of timberland in the U.S. and operates in the timber, chemical, packaging or land development business on most continents on the planet. Well known to forest activists as the machine that has sliced through huge swaths of forests in the U.S. and elsewhere, and as the major proponent in the U.S., along with Monsanto, of commercial development of genetically engineered (GE) trees, emerging as one of the greatest threats to native forests internationally. An interesting place for PL to draw from. Hurwitz commented that *George will add to the long and proud traditions of the Pacific Lumber Company.*
See the Eureka Times Standard story on Manne at http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_4096897
