'You don't call anymore'.

• Author: Rock, Robert H.
• Position: LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN

AST Spring, Alberto-Culver Co. was sold to Unilever Corp. Under the strong and creative leadership of board chairs Leonard Lavin and Carol Bernick. Culver had developed into a world-class personal care products company. For the past 16 years, I served on Culver's board, during which time the company's stock increased eight-fold.

In May the Culver board gathered for a farewell cocktail party with senior management and outside members of the "acquisition team," including lawyers, bankers, and other professional advisers. The evening concluded with a dinner where the directors reminisced about our times together. Our final gathering was bittersweet; we knew we had served our shareholders well, but we recognized that we would never work together again. This working relationship had been very special, both personally and professionally, for me and my colleagues.

I served on several boards that had undertaken the sale of the company. The decision to sell was never an easy one, and the process to effect a sale was always time-consuming and often anxiety-ridden. After several months of intense activity overseeing a process involving a wide array of senior management and outside advisers, each sale concluded with a farewell dinner similar to the one I had last May in Chicago.

As management switched their allegiances to the new owner, or ejected with their golden parachutes, the hoards quietly disbanded and faded away. Fur a year or two I heard from some of my fellow directors, but as time went by 1 began to lose contact and eventually fell off their Christmas card list. My fellow directors...