40 years of DAI

front, it seemed likely that ICF would maintain
the hands-off approach that it had used with its
other new subsidiaries.
That turned out to be a problem. In buying
the remnants of Kaiser Engineers, ICF bit off
more than it could swallow, and invisible to ICF
management, some of the other subsidiaries
were hemorrhaging cash. In June 1991, the deal
with DAI was weeks away and ICF was about
to issue $4 million in new shares to cover the
acquisition, when the losses incurred by those
subsidiaries came home to roost, with a vengeance.
The value of ICF’s publicly traded stock
(the currency for the planned purchase of DAI)
plunged, and the deal was called off. When ICF
collapsed, a number of the recently acquired
subsidiaries were dismantled in the effort to
salvage the company—a fate that DAI had narrowly
escaped.
Things looked very different to DAI management
after the narrow escape from ICF. Mickelwait
had gained some of his optimism back. “We
were able to move again in what I thought were
some sensible directions,” he said. He had
finally learned what Betsy Marcotte, watching
intently from the ICF side of the table, had
quickly grasped—that DAI was a company with
a great deal of promise. “It was a younger, more
entrepreneurial firm, really able to go after things
more quickly than we were,” she said. Marcotte
was deeply disappointed—she had looked
forward to working with DAI. But both she and
the company were still young, and her chance
would come.
43