The spokesman glances at his watch ... again.
"So, is he a workaholic?" a photographer asks, setting down a hard-bound copy of Mark Bernstein's Grand Eccentrics.
"He's obviously very intense," the spokesman says. "I don't know if I'd call him a workaholic."
Just then Tatar bounds into the room, booming, "Hi! Sorry I'm late." As CEO, chairman and president of the company, he had been handing out appreciation certificates at a reception for employees with 25 years in the company.
"Next year, I'm on the other side," he smiles.
Tatar, a 24-year veteran at Mead, was handed the keys to the Fortune 500 company 16 days ago - a company that's expected to boast more than $5 billion in sales this year. As it turns out, 1997 has been a mixed bag for Mead, which saw a near-20 percent drop in third-quarter earnings this year over last, but followed quickly with a two-for-one stock split and an increase in dividends shortly after Tatar took command.
Tatar, who turned 51 Saturday, says matter-of-factly that he wants Mead to be the greatest company in the forest products industry and then, beyond that, "to be the greatest company, period." A lofty goal considering the brutally cyclical nature of the paper industry, with its high overhead and wildly fluctuating price for raw materials.
Although analysts like the company, Mead observers such as Lars L. Bainbridge caution, "investors would do best to look elsewhere at this juncture."
Tatar sounds up to the challenge.
"We still are on a journey to become a great company," he says. "We want to be the preferred supplier, the preferred employer and the preferred investment."
He says he's boosting sales personnel at Zellerbach, Mead's weak-link distribution business that dragged down company earnings last quarter. He's also beefing up Mead's School and Office Supply division and its Specialty Paper division, which, he concedes, "We haven't done much with lately."
And, of course, Tatar is on the hunt for acquisitions, similar to the company's 1996 purchase of a Boise Cascade Corp. paper mill in Rumford, Maine, which included 667,000 acres of forest.
"We want to be aggressive shoppers and very prudent buyers," he says, declining to specify possible targets. "But Rumford is a good example of the kind of thing we'll be looking at."
A Pittsburgh native who earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics from Carnegie-Mellon University, Tatar worked for a mineral company while attending night school to earn his master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He joined Mead in 1973.
Tatar won't talk about his wife and two children. Years ago former Mead CEO Burnell Roberts received extortionist death threats against his family. Fear from that experience still echoes in Mead's executive stratosphere.
Tatar will continue setting higher production goals for Mead, a company that keeps an 800-pound boulder in its lobby as a metaphoric challenge to move seemingly immovable objects. He expects the company to improve production by 3 percent a year. In other words, next year Tatar wants employees to get done in 97 hours the same amount of work it took them 100 hours to do.
"This is a tough business," he says. "All divisions have to make it and every piece of the portfolio has to pull its weight."
A gregarious man who's seemingly taller than his 6-3 frame, Tatar, the company's former chief operating officer, has slid comfortably into Mead's corporate driver's seat. Like so many Mead CEOs before him, Tatar has grown through the ranks of a company that has never looked outside to fill senior management positions.
Tatar prefers to talk about similarities he has with his predecessor, but shifts in his chair when asked to discuss differences.
"I'm uncomfortable making that assessment," he says.
Yet he already has distinguished himself from Steve Mason, the 40-year, third-generation Mead man some describe politely as wooden. At a recent presentation, Tatar quoted deceased Grateful Dead ringleader Jerry Garcia: "Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us."
Mason was CEO for five years before stepping down at age 61. Mason's predecessor held the top post for a decade. Tatar puts no timeline on his tenure.
"I like what I do and I'll do it as long as I feel I'm contributing," he says.
(#2) Jerome F. Tatar (B&W)
CONTACT Mike Drummond at 225-2393 or e-mail him at
mike_drummond@coxohio.com