Another veteran CEO retires to Nashville

Former turnaround unit chief for Carlyle Group comes to town flush with cash, having sold most business holdings before recession hit

Email | Print By E. Thomas Wood

B. Edward Ewing on the factory floor at Nashville's Aerostructures Corp., 2003. (Photo by Eric England)

For the second time in three months, the former CEO of a major corporation has chosen to settle in Nashville.

B. Edward Ewing, who headed the financially and politically powerful Carlyle Group's turnaround management operation from Dallas before launching his own $1 billion investment fund in 2004, paid $3.9 million late last month to buy the home of former Dollar General CEO David Perdue at 1206 Belle Meade Blvd.

Gary Hegel, CEO of Birmingham-based Compass Bancshares Inc., bought a new $3.05 million home in Williamson County in late October – shortly before announcing his retirement from Compass, which is one of the 30 largest bank holding companies in the U.S.

Ewing bought and successfully turned around several distressed companies in the 1990s and earlier this decade, including Nashville's Aerostructures Corp., which is now part of Vought Aircraft Industries Inc. NashvillePost.com co-founder David Fox took an in-depth look at his approach to management in a 2003 profile, available at this link.

Right now, however, Ewing sounds most proud of what he didn't buy.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story in early 2007 about how the fund Ewing raised had gone three years without purchasing a company. "I was declining deals," he recalled in an interview this week. "What I saw out there didn't make business sense to me." Ewing felt that nothing good from come from committing his funds to companies that carried the heavy debt loads he was observing throughout the marketplace.

Ewing, 64, said he "admired" the dealmakers with degrees from Princeton, Harvard or the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton MBA program who were putting together so many hot transactions. "But I'm a high-school graduate from Jasper, Indiana," he said, "and I don't know how to do this."

And so, two years ago, Ewing decided to hunker down. "I sold my companies off," he recalled. "I sold my airplanes. I went into capital-preservation mode. People thought I was a pessimist. I guess I don't look so dumb now."

Last month, Ewing sold his 10,700-square-foot Dallas home, tax-appraised at $9.1 million, to billionaire oil man Trevor Rees-Jones. (Deeds in Texas do not disclose purchase prices.)

With his wife, Linda Gail Ewing, Ed Ewing decided to move to Nashville for both personal and business reasons. He is now closer to the farm he owns in Santa Claus, Ind., where he keeps an extensive antique car collection – some of which readers can drool over via this link. He is also closer to the holdings of Ewing Properties Inc., a developer of duplex subdivisions in Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky that he started more than 40 years ago and now sees as his main line of work.

Ewing said his son Tony, who is also moving to town, will lead efforts to expand Ewing Properties' holdings. He wants to see the company grow, though he is even more pessimistic now about the economy than he was two years ago.

"I think '09 will be one of the worst financial years since I've been on this earth, and I think it could take five to 10 to recover," Ewing said. He predicts that 20 to 30 U.S. states "will fail this year," defaulting on their obligations.

Even with such a dire outlook, Ewing feels that as "an all-cash guy with no debt," he is ready to consider new opportunities in Nashville. "When your money is making 0.5 percent, you're looking for deals," he said. "I'm interested in class-A real estate, and maybe businesses that are distressed and make business sense as investments."

But he quickly added: "I've done enough stuff, and I don't want to work too hard anymore."