Abraham M Sonnabend

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A.M. Sonnabend Is Dead at 67; Boston Industrialist-Financier; Botany Industries Director Created Hotel Corporation of America in 1954 FEB. 12, 1964

BOSTON, Feb. 11—A. M. Sonnabend, the industrialist, died today at good Samaritan Hospital in Palm Beach, Fla., where he was on vacation. He was 67 years old.

Mr. Sonnabend entered the hospital Saturday after having suffered a heart attack.

The financier, whose first name was Abraham, was chairman of the Hotel Corporation of America, the Ward Baking Company and several other corporations, and a director of the Columbia Pictures Corporation, Botany Industries, Inc., and numerous others.

Mr. Sonnabend was president of the Hotel Corporation of America until the annual meeting of May 9, 1963, when stockholders complained that while he was receiving $100,000 as annual salary, they were not receiving any dividends. After the meeting it was announced that he had been elected chairman at $75,000 a year. His son, Roger, then became president at $50,000 a year.

Mr. Sonnabend was president of the American Jewish Committee.

He leaves his wife, Mrs. Esther Lewitt Sonnabend; three sons, Roger, Paul and Stephen; a brother, Leopold M. Sonnabend; a sister, Mrs. Lillian Goldinger, and 12 grandchildren.

A funerai service will be held at 2 P.M. on Thursday at Temple Israel here.

It was said of Mr. Sonnabend that he had a rare knack of mixing red and black ink on corporation ledgers and producing pure black.

Continue reading the main story The Sonnabend technique was to arrange “weddings" between thriving companies and others less prosperous. The more affluent partner in the union would receive a “dowry” from the other, in the form of a taxloss carry‐forward.

Thus current and future income of the merged corporation would be, to some extent, tax‐free

The Boston‐born financier revived some very sick companies by his methods. The Childs Company was a case in point. When Mr. Sonnabend became president of the restaurant chain in 1954 it had just lost $3 million and was faced with a further deficit of $2 million.

He merged it with several profitable properties, including the Plaza and Roosevelt Hotels in New York, the Somerset Hotel here, the Cleveland in Cleveland, the Edgewater Beach in Chicago and the Mayflower in Washington.

Advantage of Childs's taxloss carry‐forward situation was taken in the financing of the merged company, which was named the Hotel Corporation of America. The corporation later branched out into motels and food products, and by 1957 could show $1 million in net profits.

When Mr. Sonnabend took over direction of the Botany Mills organization, it had a $16 million deficit. Twelve comparnies that made everything from sun tan lotion to luggage were added to its roster of subsidiaries. By 1957 Botany, renamed Botany Industries, Inc., had recorded sales of $96 million.

In 1961 Mr. Sonnabend was elected chairman of the Seagrave Corporation, fire engine manufactures with annual sales of up to $50 million. In recent years he also became a director of the Alleghany Corporation, a major holding company with a controlling interest in the New York Central Railroad System and other important business concerns.

There were numerous other examples of Mr. Sonnabend's expertise at the resuscitation of companies through merger and diversification. Early this year seven directors representing him were elected to a controlling position in the Lionel Corporation, manufacturer of toy electric trains, which had had its financial troubles. That move was temporarily blocked by a New York State Supreme Court ruling allowing the new board only day‐to‐day control,

Mr. Sonnabend, a graduate of Harvard with the class of 18, was a naval aviation and flying instructor in World War I. He started his real‐estate and hotel transactions with $5,000 borrowed from his father, the late Joseph Sonnabend, and made a $22,000 profit the first. year.

His first coup came in 1944, when he bought several Palm Beach hotels for $2.4 million from Henry L. Doherty, the oil man. At the end of his first year of ownership he sold one of them, the Biltmore, to Conrad Hilton for a price said to equal what it and three other Palm Beach properties had cost him.

Bought Cleveland Properties

In another hotel deal. Mr. Sonnabend and his associates paid Robert R. Young, the late railroad man, $8 million for Van Sweringen railroad properties in downtown Cleveland, including the Cleveland Hotel.

Another story about Mr. Sonnabend was that he missed owning the Statler Hotels chain by 24 hours. Several groups. his among them, offered the Statler heirs $50 a share for their 700,000 shares of stock. Conrad Hilton, however, won the deal when he put down $38 million in cash one day before the Sonnabend interests were to close the deal.

Last Dec. 28, the financier, as president of the American Jewish Committee, accused some of the nation's leading utilities of discriminatory practices against Jews and other minority groups in the recruitment and promotion of management personnel. He said that Jews made up less than 1 per cent of the total executive personnel in these utilities.

The industrialist had been president of the Boston Foundation, and a director of the Massachusetts Higher Education Assistance Corporation. the American Child Guidance Foundation, the Palm Beach Community Chest and Good Samaritan Hospital in Palm Beach.

He also was chairman of Premier Industries, Inc., undergarment manufacturers, and of the Federated Capital Corporation, and president and director of the Sonnabend Associated Properties and the Premier Corporation of America, the last a highly diversified company in the sportswear, venetian blind and auto accessory fields.

Mr. Sonnabend was United States veterans squash racquets champion in 1938.

A version of this archives appears in print on February 12, 1964, on Page 33 of the New York edition with the headline: A.M. Sonnabend Is Dead at 67; Boston Industrialist-Financier; Botany Industries Director Created Hotel Corporation of America in 1954. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe