Biggest key to CEO success?

Bassoul's positive fanaticism helps oven-maker go from struggling= to world-class <= o:p>

Ted= Pincus

The= Chicago Sun-Times=

15 = May 2007

Who is the most effec= tive CEO of a Chicago public company?

My 2007 award goes to= Selim Bassoul of Middleby Corp., the Elgin maker of commercial food service equipment.

What's his single key success gene? I call it positive fanaticism.

In my 40 years of cou= nseling CEOs and five years of interviewing them for this column, I've concluded th= at above brains, brawn, creativity or pedigree, the one trait I've seen spell spectacular success for a company and its shareholders is unlimited, unshak= able confidence and supernatural belief iny ourself. Rational exuberance. Visible in the extreme, it can infect and inspire your researchers, produce= rs, sales force and customers like nothing else.

QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE HONOR

What qualifies Bassou= l for this new award?

How about sales quadr= upling in six years to win the No. 1 spot in his industry worldwide, boosting earn= ings 1,200 percent, and widening operatingm argins to 19 percent vs. the industry's 12 percent? <= o:p>

How about bringing ho= me a 60 percent return on equity while raising the value of that equity 14 times= in just the last three years?

How about giving shareholders a 2,300 percent gain in market value sinc= et aking the reins, and today enjoying a record $1= .1 billion market cap and ap rice/earnings ratio o= f 27 -- almost unheard of for a maker of prosaic capital equipment? <= /span>

That's the record com= piled by this 49-year-old Lebanese immigrant who stormed America in the 1980s, earned a Kellogg MBA and won prime spots at AmericanH ospital Supply and Baxter International before joining Middleby (MIDD) in 1996 and becoming CEO in 2000.

With the requisite sm= arts and professionalism, but with prodigious bravado and boldness, Bassoul turn= ed a sleepy, struggling oven-maker into the world's leading supplier of commerci= al and industrial food service equipment, withp ace-setting brand names such as Southbend and Toastmaster. From McDonald'so utlets in Chi= na to the haute cuisine kitchens of the Four Seasons, his equipment today is automating, speeding, cost-cutting, and energy-saving = inr ecord numbers.

= Bassoul's innate impatience with the st= atus quo and kinetic energy were first seen in late 2001 when, after cutting hal= f of the company's 10,000 products, he did the unthinkable and offered Maytag $95 million to sell him its Blodgettd ivision, a maker of heavy- duty commercial ovens that was bigger than all of Middleb= y at the time.

"It was brash,&q= uot; Bassoul says, "because we were all plunging into post-9/11 recession w= hen nobody was flying, and restaurants were dying."

His sheer confidence convinced his banks to lend him the cash, and he took off with the opportun= ity to leapfrog into a major position in the field, betting on an early recovery and plans to make Blodgett blossom.

More recently, he did succeed in buying Jade Range from Maytag, = which enabled Middleby to enter the $1.5 billion residential kitchen equipment market.

FOCUSED PASSION =

= Bassoul's passion is focused mainly on improving what he has, innovatings tate-of-the-art systems for more efficient mass feedi= ng. Having persistently plowed 3 percent of sales into R&D each year, he's shaking up the industry with a flow of new concepts. At the Kitchen and Bath Show in Las Vegas<= /st1:City> thisw eek, he'll unveil an Ice & Fire doubl= e oven that speeds cooking of frozen foods, a combination oven and steamer for spa= ce saving, ranges that recapture (like a car's afterburner) and re-use the huge amount of wasted heat that goes up the flue.

Racking up his 20th consecutive quarter of record earnings, Bassoul isc onvinced the current momentum, despite rising steel c= osts, will be sustainable over the coming three years. He tells me he isn't quarreling with street consensus estimates of record profits of $6 a share = this year on $447 million sales and $7 next year on $486 million volume.

Now, dear reader, fin= d me a more fanatical Chicago CEO with a superiorr ecord. I'd like to meet him.

Ted Pincus is a finance professor at DePaul and managing partner of Stevens Gould Pincus, merger and management consultants.