Pending Friendly Sale Means Company Founder Can Relax
S. Prestley Blake has spent more than six years fighting with the managers of Friendly Ice Cream, the company he started with his brother in 1935 and sold four decades later before returning as a major shareholder.
Now, the 92-year-old plans to retire.
A pending $337 million deal to sell Wilbraham-based Friendly’s to Sun Capital Partners means the end of a lawsuit he filed against the chairman and a $16 million stock sale for Blake, who has bought more than 13 percent of the company since 2001.
“I’m happy to call this my swan song in business,” Blake said in a telephone interview from his home in Somers, Conn. “I don’t expect to get into any more business at all. I’m happy the way I am.”
A content Blake is something recent Friendly observers and investors are unfamiliar with.
Blake sold his ice cream empire to Hershey Foods in 1978 and spent years pursuing private interests and directing much of his money to charities and academic institutions before he dealt himself back into the company he calls his “baby” in 2001.
With a $2 million investment, he bought about 10 percent of Friendly’s shares, explaining he couldn’t sit by and watch as the company was — in his opinion — being mismanaged by chairman Donald Smith.
A lawsuit followed two years later, in which Blake accused Smith of using Friendly’s corporate jet for his personal use and using the airplane lease to funnel $3 million annually from the company into another restaurant chain he controlled. Friendly’s board of directors investigated the claims and found no wrongdoing, but the lawsuit has been pending.
Meanwhile, Blake continued buying Friendly stock. He was the company’s largest shareholder until San Antonio-based investor Sardar Biglari bought up about 15 percent of the company last year.
If the sale to Sun Capital goes through as expected later this summer, a new board of directors will be in place and the lawsuit will be moot. Smith, who follows Biglari and Blake as the company’s third-largest shareholder, will no longer be involved in Friendly’s management.
Smith could not be reached for comment.
Biglari — who has joined Blake in criticizing how Friendly’s has been run — said he and Blake never pushed the company toward a sale.
“The goal was to unlock the value that exists in Friendly’s, and we achieved that goal,” said Biglari, who will earn an estimated $8 million profit from the sale. “I think Press Blake was victorious here.”
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