Four decades after a young oil man named George Bush moved drilling company Zapata Corp. from West Texas to Houston, one of the city's most colorful corporations has quietly moved on to Rochester, N.Y.
Zapata, now out of oil service and into the far-flung businesses of marine protein, food packaging and Internet site development, has quietly shifted its headquarters to the New York location in recent months. While Zapata still lists Houston as its home on filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, its press releases and other company documents now name Rochester.
And this week, Zapata Internet subsidiary Zap.com Corp. filed with the SEC to conduct an initial public offering worth as much as $108 million. The IPO filing lists its headquarters as Rochester, the home of Avram Glazer, president and CEO of both Zap.com and Zapata.
Although the company has shifted operations northward, Zapata has survived a colorful -- if checkered -- history during its forty years in Houston, including boom, bust and near-bankruptcy.
Former President Bush was 26 when he arrived in Midland in 1950 to seek adventure and fortune in the thriving oil industry. That year he and his neighbor, John Overbey, founded the Bush-Overbey Oil Development Co. with financial backing of $350,000 from Bush's father, U.S. Sen. Prescott Bush of Connecticut, his uncle, George Herbert Walker Bush, as well as Eugene Meyer, owner of The Washington Post.
"We had a two-man office," Overbey recalled in a 1989 interview. "There was a lot of research, walking fields, talking to people and trying to make deals."
In 1953 Bush and Overbey joined forces with brothers Hugh and Bill Liedtke to create Zapata Petroleum and formed Zapata Offshore Co. a year later.
Casting about for a name for their new company, the oil men saw a theater marquee announcing the Marlon Brando film `Viva Zapata!,' the story of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, and they seized upon the name.
The company used most of its initial stake to buy a one-third interest in the Jamieson field in Coke County, an acquisition consisting of five or six wells scattered over 6,000 to 8,000 acres. The Liedtkes believed the wells were connected to a single oil source.
Zapata took on $4.5 million in debt and raised another million from the same investors to develop the field, although many experienced oil men -- including some members of Zapata's board -- shook their heads with doubt about the high risk of the venture.
"We drilled around 130 wells and never had a dry hole," Bill Liedtke later recalled.
By 1959 Bush and the Liedtkes agreed to split the company and go their separate ways. Bush wanted to go into drilling and the Liedtkes wanted to stay in production. Bush bought out Zapata Petroleum's 43 percent interest in Zapata Offshore and moved it to Houston.
There, Bush pursued politics and soon followed his father's path, running for the U.S. Senate in 1964. He lost that race but won a seat in the House in 1966.
Bush had resigned as chairman of Zapata Offshore to run his congressional campaign. When he won, he sold his 6 percent stake in Zapata for $1.1 million. Within 18 months, the stock of Zapata, under new management, doubled in value.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Zapata, under chairman and CEO William Flynn, expanded its business to include subsidiaries in dredging, construction, coal mining, copper mining and fishing.
But by the late 1970s, saddled with weak operations, high debt and low return on investment, the company again began undergoing changes in management and direction. Lead by John Mackin, who succeeded William Flynn, the company began selling off some of those businesses and trying to refocus on offshore oil and gas exploration and production.
In 1982 chief operating officer Ronald Lassiter assumed the role of CEO -- just in time to preside over a decade of red ink brought on by the collapse of oil prices.
By 1986 Zapata was one of the bad loans that shook the foundations of San Francisco-based Bank of America, with a debt of more than $500 million and a fiscal year loss of $250 million.
The company announced several restructurings during those years and managed to stave off bankruptcy more than once. By the late 1980s, Zapata's oil service operations were consistently chalking up major losses.
In 1990 the oil drilling company proposed selling its entire fleet of offshore drilling rigs to focus solely on fishing. The company had not had a profitable quarter in more than five years.
Still struggling with debt by 1993, Zapata signed a deal with Norex America to raise more than $100 million through a loan and stock sale. But financier Malcolm Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL franchise and then-owner of 40 percent of Zapata, didn't want his holdings diluted and filed a lawsuit to block the deal.
A month-long standoff and a fierce proxy fight delayed the company's annual meeting. But when the dust settled, Glazer and his son, Avram, were members of Zapata's board. A year later, Malcolm Glazer became chairman of Zapata, replacing Ronald Lassiter, and in 1995 Avram Glazer was named CEO and president of Zapata.
The Glazers spun off the company's fishing business, renamed Omega Protein, in 1998 and announced plans to become a major Internet company. Announcements of alliances and acquisitions with such reputed Internet businesses as Amazon.com, Excite and numerous other Web sites and online magazine publishers sent the company's stock price soaring.
But last November, when the company suddenly reversed itself on the Internet plans, its stock dropped and numerous shareholder lawsuits were filed.
Now the company has retooled its Internet offerings and unveiled the Zap.com offering as Zapata's latest spin-off.
But industry analysts who have followed Zapata in recent years remain skeptical.
"Show me something," says one analyst who asked not to be named. "I'm looking for signs they're serious."