Larry R. Polhill caught the bug for acquisitions early - when he was still in high school.
Even then, he knew that he didn't want to work for anyone else, he said. So Polhill sold his Studebaker and enticed his high school business teacher, Bill Guymon, to join him as a partner in buying a gas station.
That was in the late 1960s.
Today, Polhill's former business teacher still works with him - as an employee. Guymon, who retired from teaching in 1984, is now general manager of Pate Foods Corp. in South Beloit, Ill.
Polhill, his boss, is president of the snack food manufacturer, as well as the San Bernardino-based holding company that owns it, American Pacific Financial Corp.
"I have learned an awful lot from Larry since I've gone to work for him," Guymon, his former teacher said. "Maybe I started out as his teacher, but the role has been reversed over the years."
Since leaving high school in Illinois, Polhill has quietly built a large collection of companies and properties throughout the nation. American Pacific Financial now boasts more than $125 million in assets.
Polhill, 46, calls himself a "professional opportunist" who specializes in business turnarounds. By that, he means that when struggling or fledgling companies cross his path, he's apt to offer financial and management assistance in exchange for equity ownership.
His firm raises much of its funds for this purpose from private investors, typically professionals like doctors, with whom it has longstanding relationships, Polhill says.
His holding company currently is affiliated with roughly a dozen firms through partnerships or partial or full ownership. They include a pair of space launch service providers, a health club, a cluster of Illinois food manufacturers, an Internet service provider, a trucking company and a real estate company.
American Pacific is poised to acquire another trucking company soon and merge it with Victorville-based Kitchens Transport Inc., a cement hauler the holding company owns, Polhill said. He wouldn't name the acquisition target, but said the target complements Kitchens' cement-hauling business.
Kelly Space & Technology Inc. is an illustration of how Polhill's domain spreads. Polhill joined the board of directors of the fledgling San Bernardino space launch company about a year ago, promising to help raise funds for construction of its spacecraft.
Over the past four months, Polhill has lined up over $8 million in financing, according to Kelly Space officials.
He also transformed Kelly Space's prototype, first-stage craft into a viable business in its own right.
Although the prototype is designed only to deliver research payloads that briefly enter freefall before crashing back to Earth, there's a $77 million per year market for such flights, Polhill noted. So he created Eclipse Space Lines Inc., a company that would license Kelly Space's prototype to serve that market while giving Kelly Space some extra capital through licensing arrangements -capital it can use to develop more advanced craft.
Breaking the prototype out as a separate company also gives potential investors something distinct and easy to understand, according to Kelly Space officials.
Kelly Space Vice President Michael Gallo said Polhill is a rare find: a financial savior who isn't out to "rape the company."
"That's what a company like ours needs, is someone like Larry. There aren't many Larrys out there," Gallo said.
Polhill, who first got into real estate shortly after moving to California in 1973, says he started collecting companies right before the bottom fell out of the real estate market in the early '90s.
He claims he saw the bust coming, and weathered the recession by getting out of real estate. That foresight was the benefit of witnessing previous crashes in the California real estate market since 1973, he said.
Polhill's rationale for entering business investment and operation is simple: to give his company a base level of operating capital.
"I didn't want to have to sell real estate to pay the bills," he said. "Real estate is gravy. You don't want to sell in a down market."
Although he's a licensed commercial pilot, real estate broker and financial planner, Polhill never went to college.
"I think not going to college was an asset," Polhill says. "I didn't have any preconceived notions."
Since no classes have told him how to do things - or that some things cannot be done - he sees more options than many of his college-educated peers, he claims. Nevertheless, Polhill has hired a fair number of college grads - including his brother Dennis.
Originally published in The Business Press 09/22/97
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