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As Aviation Week’s business editor, I have interviewed a good number of CEOs during the past eight years. Few were as colorful as Walter J. Zable, who founded Cubic Corp. in a San Diego storefront during the Korean War and continued to run the company for more than six decades. Last year, at the urging of a longtime reader, I flew out to California and wrote a profile on Zable, who easily held the title of the aerospace and defense industry’s oldest and longest-serving chief executive. It was a story that wrote itself, filled with anecdotes involving the likes of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Hosni Mubarak and 23 U.S. defense secretaries, not to mention a company on the cutting edge of the space age and global positioning revolution. It even had some cloak and dagger dealings that had Zable fearing for his life. “I carried a .38 revolver with me,” he recalled. “You could take it on a plane in those days.” Cubic reported Monday that Zable has died at the age of 97, holding on to his title of chairman, president and CEO to the very end. Those were not hollow titles: when I visited the 7,800-employee defense and transportation firm, Zable was still coming to work on a daily basis, barking out orders. And Cubic remained successful: it placed first last year among companies with revenues of $1-5 billion in Aviation Week’s Top-Performing Companies study, and missed the top spot this year by a fraction of a point. The San Diego Union Tribune’s obituary of Zable can be viewed here. Cubic also has posted a video about him on its Facebook page. The question now: what happens to Cubic? Zable controlled 40% of the company’s stock, and he wasn’t selling. Now that he’s gone, there is sure to be speculation about whether Cubic will be an acquisition target.
As Aviation Week’s business editor, I have interviewed a good number of CEOs during the past eight years. Few were as colorful as Walter J. Zable, who founded Cubic Corp. in a San Diego storefront during the Korean War and continued to run the company for more than six decades. Last year, at the urging of a longtime reader, I flew out to California and wrote a profile on Zable, who easily held the title of the aerospace and defense industry’s oldest and longest-serving chief executive.
It was a story that wrote itself, filled with anecdotes involving the likes of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Hosni Mubarak and 23 U.S. defense secretaries, not to mention a company on the cutting edge of the space age and global positioning revolution. It even had some cloak and dagger dealings that had Zable fearing for his life. “I carried a .38 revolver with me,” he recalled. “You could take it on a plane in those days.”
Cubic reported Monday that Zable has died at the age of 97, holding on to his title of chairman, president and CEO to the very end. Those were not hollow titles: when I visited the 7,800-employee defense and transportation firm, Zable was still coming to work on a daily basis, barking out orders. And Cubic remained successful: it placed first last year among companies with revenues of $1-5 billion in Aviation Week’s Top-Performing Companies study, and missed the top spot this year by a fraction of a point.
The San Diego Union Tribune’s obituary of Zable can be viewed here. Cubic also has posted a video about him on its Facebook page. The question now: what happens to Cubic? Zable controlled 40% of the company’s stock, and he wasn’t selling. Now that he’s gone, there is sure to be speculation about whether Cubic will be an acquisition target.
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