Rams: Khan's latest conquest?

URBANA – It seems only appropriate that a man who made his fortune in bumpers would buy a team called the Rams.

Shahid Khan, the 59-year-old president of Urbana-based auto parts manufacturer Flex-N-Gate Corp., has a tentative agreement to buy a 60 percent stake in the St. Louis football team, according to announcements Thursday.

The deal must be approved by a 75 percent vote of NFL owners.

Khan's purchase of the team is the latest venture in a string of expansions that date back more than 30 years. And he is a man who has a history of taking the next step, even if the step isn't easy.

In his early days of making bumpers, Khan found it tough to sell to the Big Three automakers, so he went to the Japanese.

He soon supplied virtually all the Japanese truck manufacturers, and by the 1990s, he was supplying their American counterparts.

Today, Flex-N-Gate Corp. employs more than 9,500 people at 57 facilities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina and Spain, according to the company's Web site. That's down from 13,000 a few years ago.

Its products have extended far beyond bumpers. Over the years, its lines grew to include exterior components, grilles, jacks for changing tires, hinges, latches and mechanical parts – and more recently, parking brakes and pedals.

Khan, a native of Pakistan, came to the United States in 1967, and graduated from the University of Illinois with an engineering degree.

While in school, he worked for Flex-N-Gate, but in 1978, he started his own business. He ended up acquiring Flex-N-Gate and operating it as a sister company to his Bumper Works plant in Danville. Later, he opened the Master Guard plant near Veedersburg, Ind., and the Guardian West plant in Urbana.

And the growth kept coming, unrestricted by national boundaries.

By 2008, Flex-N-Gate was ranked by Forbes magazine as the 155th largest private company in the United States, with $2.72 billion in revenues for the previous fiscal year. Last year, it fell to 229th place in the ranking, with revenues of $2.14 billion.

Not only has Khan acquired companies and facilities throughout the world, but he has also made acquisitions locally.

In 2003, he acquired a controlling interest in Flightstar, the aviation service company based at Willard. One reason: Flex-N-Gate was using Flightstar services a lot in travel to distant facilities.

In 2008, Khan took over operation of the Urbana Golf & Country Club facilities.

In a 1987 interview with The News-Gazette, Khan explained how he was able to sell to the Japanese, even though he couldn't crack the U.S. automakers at that time.

"The simple reason was that the Japanese didn't have ties with U.S. (bumper) firms. They bought simply on product and pricing," he said. By contrast, "the U.S. industry had (supplier) ties that go back to the horse-and-buggy days," he said. "Those are hard to shake."

Khan's selling point was his bumper design: a light, continuous piece of metal with no seams where corrosion and rust could start.

By 1992, he was making bumpers for Ford and Dodge trucks but still hadn't snagged General Motors as a client. But in time, GM, Volkswagen and BMW would eventually enter the fold.

In 2000, Khan delivered a lecture at the UI in which he called himself a "contrarian thinker" in making business decisions.

His advice: play to competitors' weaknesses, make strategic alliances to maximize your strength and keep information to yourself.

He continued to follow that last piece of advice – perhaps to his detriment last year.

In January 2009, Forbes magazine ran a small story on Khan and his use of tax shelters – a story Khan quickly branded as "an absolute hatchet job."

In a subsequent interview with The News-Gazette, Khan said he avoided national publicity for 41 years and thought details of the tax case got written about because the figures involved "a lot more zeroes than is common."

He said he declined to cooperate with Forbes on a previous story, and felt the magazine tried to teach him a lesson by running the tax case snippet. "The lesson was, I've got to talk to the national media," he said.

Khan said he paid the disputed tax amount in full. He has since filed suit against financial advisers who recommended those shelters.

Stan Kroenke, a billionaire from Columbia, Mo., owns the remaining 40 percent of the Rams franchise.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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