Spectator's Notebook
ON Monday one of my favourite tycoons was dining with me, and 1 thought as he talked that some British publisher, all unsuspecting as yet, perhaps, is in for a brisk and invigorating experience. For many years Armand Grover Erpf has earned his daily caviare as a senior partner in the Wall Street investment bankers, Carl M. Loeb, Rhoades & Co. Five years ago he headed Wall Street's new interest in publish- ing when he moved in massive strength into Crowell-Collier, after Collier's Magazine had gone and the company was in poor shape. Prosperity ensued promptly (a four-million-dol- lar profit last year and an estimated five-and-a- quarter million this year). So did expansion. With- in a year Erpf was in the market building up his interest in the huge firm of Macmillan, New York, and by the end of 1960 the hundred per cent. take-over was complete. A few other com- panies have been roped in since then, most re- cently the Brentano chain of bookstores. Erpf now controls one of the largest book publishing and distributing businesses outside the Com- munist world, but he would like to see it a great deal bigger still; and now, between bouts of business in the City and art-collecting, he is taking careful stock of the deals that might be done in London. We shall be hearing more about this sixty-four-year-old ball of fire.
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