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One day in 1980, Ian Maxwell, then 24, decided that patching things up with a girlfriend was more urgent than meeting his father's plane at Paris's Orly airport. It wasn't a smart move. Robert Maxwell promptly fired his son as an executive of Maxwell companies in France and Germany. The story, now a fond part of the Maxwell family legend, tells a great deal about the tough, demanding way Maxwell treated and groomed his heirs to take over the family business. So far, the education seems to be working. Within hours of his death last week his two sons, Kevin, 32, and Ian, 35, went from targets of their father's wrath to aggressive, confident bosses. They held news conferences and meetings to calm Maxwell's many bankers and investors, and Kevin flew to New York to soothe American employees and sell copies of the Maxwellowned Daily News. "We're here to stay," he told News employees. It was a plucky performance, but analysts wondered whether the two sons could hold together their father's debt-laden media empire .
Maxwell and his French wife, Elisabeth, had nine children. Only Kevin and Ian, the youngest of three surviving sons, displayed a continuing interest in his business, and their father began an apprenticeship early on. At dinner, according to an account by his wife, Maxwell would grill the children to hone their speaking skills. "STOP speaking ... now TRY again..." Maxwell would bellow when too many "umms" or "ahs" were uttered. The upbringing apparently produced that curious mixture of love and fear. A story is told of how Ian, losing badly in a poker game, began to sweat and double his bets to win his money back. He was terrified to tell his father that he had lost in a card game. Says a former Maxwell employee: "He brought the sons up like a Renaissance prince-or the Godfather. He was going to pass them on an empire--and he treated them like dirt. But they loved him."
Except for brief periods, both Kevin and Ian have spent their working lives inside the Maxwell businesses. Three years ago Maxwell first hinted that the younger Kevin was the heir apparent by naming him head of the Macmillan Inc. publishing company at the age of 29. While both sons had attended Balliol College at Oxford, Kevin's toughness and stable lifestyle seemed to suit his father's taste. Serious and dour at times, Kevin children. Ian, funny and extroverted, inherited his mother's "Gallic charm," said a friend, and only this year gave up his ladies' man reputation, marrying an American. While Ian was given control of Maxwell's Mirror Group Newspapers, Kevin in July was named chief executive of Maxwell Communication, the flagship company. He also got top pecking order with an office adjoining his father's.
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While they may lack Robert Maxwell's grand, strategic vision, the two sons are highly respected as managers. Some analysts think their calmer manner will -make them more appealing to employees and bankers who had tasted their father's volatility. Their first and most daunting task is to pare the companies' huge debt, now at roughly $4 billion, that is threatening their profitability. In recent months Maxwell Communication has sold properties worth millions and last week tried to quell investor fears by announcing another sale, a $265 million stake in Berlitz International. The news didn't help, as the company's stock fell by 40 percent in one day. But more sales are coming, as the sons continue to undo their father's strategy of building a global media company. The most pessimistic analysts think the company will be hardly recognizable in a few years, dismembered by sales. One big and mysterious question is how intimate Kevin is with his father's weblike private interests, which are linked in various ways with the publicly traded companies. Keeping a family business going is tough under any circumstances. The bankers can only hope the sons have learned well at the knee of their father.
A KINGDOM BUILT ON DEBT In order to pay down huge bank loans, analysts say the Maxwell sons will be forced to sell some of their father's prized properties.
Includes Macmillan and Macmillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing, Collier's Encyclopedia and Official Airline Guides. Fiscal 1991 revenues: $2 billion. Debt: $2.5 billion
Holdings include the Daily Mirror and four other British newspapers. Revenues for fiscal 1990: $792 million. Debt: $583 million
Private holdings include the New York Daily News, The European and the Oxford United Football Club. Revenues: unknown. Debt: $1.3 billion
Candidates include the Daily News, Official Airline Guides, Panini (a soccer card company), Maxwell's sports clubs.
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