(from www.sec.gov)
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Dart Group Corp. |
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From the April 28, 1997 Washington Post
| '96 (in $ 000s) | % Change From '95 | |
| Revenue | 678,136 | (29.9) |
| Net Income | (13,424) | -- |
Description:
Dart Group Corp. is the retail holding company for Shoppers Food Warehouse Corp. and Total Beverage Corp. It also owns controlling stakes in Crown Books Corp. and Trak Auto Corp. Dart's voting stock is entirely owned by the Haft family, putting the company in the middle of the family members' bitter and complex feud over the past four years.
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Dart has struggled to extricate itself from the costly and distracting legal morass related to the Haft family's courtroom disputes. The company continues to spend thousands of dollars on legal fees, but a court order forbidding the Hafts from interfering with the day-to-day operations of Dart has allowed its executive committee to make some key personnel and strategic decisions about its subsidiaries in the past year.
Most significantly, Dart purchased the 50 percent of Shoppers Food Warehouse that it did not own—though the transaction developed in a roundabout way and had to be resolved in court to overcome the objections of Dart's chairman, Herbert Haft.
Also, Dart had been trying to negotiate a settlement with Haft that would have involved a cash payment in exchange for his leaving the company. But Dart needed to raise the money to pay Haft in the event the two sides reached an agreement. Dart's half-ownership of Shoppers was controlled by a complicated legal agreement that if triggered, meant that one partner would have to sell to the other at a price set by the initiating owner. Dart triggered this buy-sell agreement last fall, and in a surprise move the Herman family, which had founded the chain, agreed to sell its ownership interest to Dart.
Now that Dart owns Shoppers—the third-largest grocery chain in the Washington area—outright, it has appointed a management team to replace the two members of the Herman family who left. Analysts and some industry executives believe that Dart will try to sell the profitable chain soon, but Dart officials insist they plan to run Shoppers at least for a while.
Dart is trying to negotiate a settlement with the Hafts, while overseeing the continuing conversion of Crown Books and Trak Auto into smaller chains with bigger stores that can compete more effectively in today's retail industry.
