Durham Corp.'s last claim.

• Position: Durham Corp. closes shop

As an elite member of North Carolina business for 85 years, it's a shame Durham Corp. went out of business with so little style.

There was certainly nothing polite about the dismemberment of the Raleigh-based insurance and broadcasting company.

Durham's problems started years ago when the company failed to expand effectively beyond its slow-growing business of home-service life insurance. Recent earnings haven't come close to matching the record $30 million in 1986.

Hostile stockholders tried to buy the company for $317 million last year. Durham Corp.'s board, dominated by Raleigh insiders such as Sherwood Smith Jr., Bill Friday, Karl Hudson Jr. and other buddies of CEO George Womble, rebuffed that bid long enough to attract a white knight, namely Capital Holding Corp. of Louisville, Ky.

Buying Durham for about $250 million in stock makes perfect sense for Capital Holding, which plans to merge it into its Durham-based Peoples Security Life Insurance Co., a home-service insurer that it bought in 1973.

Capital Holding didn't want the broadcasting business, so the hostile investors decided to buy it. They paid $3 million in cash and tendered roughly $26 million in Durham Corp...