This is not your father's corporation.

• Author: Donsky, Martin
• Position: Top 50 North Carolina corporations - Directory

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER'S CORPORATION A new generation of Tar Heel public companies has made its way onto this year's Top 50 list.

Bill Millis is the only member of the family still working for the company his great-grandfather started 85 years ago. But the family no longer owns the business, and for the first time a Millis is not in charge.

Nor can North Carolina investors buy stock in the High Point-based maker of socks and hosiery. Since its friendly sale last year, the Adams-Millis Corp. has been a subsidiary of Sara Lee Corp., headquartered 1,000 miles northwest in Chicago.

"Nothing is stable anymore," says James Millis Sr., who left the company soon after it was sold. Adams-Millis first opened for business in 1904 and since 1928 had been traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Take a look at the chart that accompanies this story. In eight years, 75 companies have appeared on BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA's list of the state's Top 50 publicly held companies. The list is compiled by Jim Green and Brooks Adams of O'Herron & Co., a Raleigh investment management firm.

Of the 25 no longer on the list, one, Key Co., is in bankruptcy reorganization. A second, Microwave Laboratories, was No. 50 in 1988 but ranked 51st this year. All the rest were sold, moved or taken private, in most cases to ward off a hostile raider. After this year's list was compiled, another company, PCA International, disclosed that it was considering a management-led buyout.

Another look at the chart reveals how the pace and depth of this change has grown in the past two years. Fourteen companies -- seven in 1988 and seven this year -- have left the list. In 1983, the second year BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA published the ranking, just one previously listed company dropped off.

Friendly deals, leveraged buyouts, sales to "white knights" to thwart raiders. We've had them all.

Clearly, the changes in the Top 50 mirror shifts in the economy. Many of the well-known companies no longer on the list are textile, apparel or furniture makers that went private through leveraged buyouts or sold out to competitors -- old-line companies in maturing industries that struggled unsuccessfully to remain competitive and independent.

Many of the newcomers to the list are high-tech enterprises -- companies whose products or services did not exist when buying Tar Heel stock meant owning a piece of R.J. Reynolds, Burlington Industries or Cone Mills. Compu-Chem Corp. new to the list this year, conducts...