114 UTAH INTERNATIONAL: A BIOGRAPHY OF A BUSINESS large jobs to receive ten to fifteen bids.” Obviously, it made sense to sell this faltering branch of the business; and the board of directors urged Littlefield to take this course during a number of turbulent meetings. Littlefield agreed except for timing. He knew that the market simply had no willingness to pay any kind of high price-earnings ratio in the construction business. There had never been a successful publicly-held construction company, although Morrison Knudsen came as close as any. Littlefield consistently tried to convince the directors that the company could not simply sell a business that was not making money. “The only way to get out of the construction business,” he argued, “is to put it on a profitable basis and then sell, given the nature of the business we’re in.” Littlefield and Eccles knew that very little of the company’s stock ever changed hands, although Paul Wattis (E. O.’s son) accumulated some shares during the 1940s because he was the only buyer. He acquired thirty-two hundred shares soon after joining the company and held 16,000 shares by 1954. Most of the shareholders remained relatives or close friends of the founding families, with the E.O. Wattis family as the largest shareholder. Littlefield observed that “no real market existed for these shares although the local newspapers carried bid and ask prices that were usually below the book value of the company. But the fact was that no stock was really being traded.” To illustrate, Littlefield had served ona private company board with a broker in Los Angeles. When Littlefield went with Utah, the broker decided to buy shares in the Utah Construction Company. He “ran the price from $65 to $115 ... and he was never able to buy one share,” Littlefield explained. “This was alarming because inheritance taxes could be influenced by a published stock quote; but without an assured market, there was no guarantee that the stock could actually be sold in quantity at this price.” Determined to obtain a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, Littlefield began working with brokers and security analysts, having already cultivated the bankers. Palmer Weber, a San Francisco friend of Eccles, also became interested in Utah’s significant progress. After a career in government, Weber had gone into the brokerage business looking for special situations to