Ralston Purina: 1970s Story Of A Bill Stiritz Turn-Around

Ralston Purina: A Public LBO by Broyhill , below are some excerpts on Bill Stiritz  and the story of a company he turned around

In our last post, we highlighted a few lessons from Thorndike’s Capital Surgeons. With this sound advice in mind, we’ll take a closer look at one Outsider’s history of success before analyzing the platform he is constructing today.

Ralston Purina was a fairly typical packaged food company during the 1970s. Led by CEO Hal Dean, the company invested mountains of cash flow into a jumbled collection of operating businesses until Dean’s retirement in 1980.

The stock hadn’t budged in a decade, when Bill Stiritz earned the top job by providing the board with a...