times the business in a store only 33% larger than the industry average," the report said. In its 1978 annual report, Supermarkets General claimed Pathmark had become the top supermarket chain in the New York area, with a 15-percent sales share. Twelve of its 109 stores now were Super Centers. That year, Pathmark sales volume was $1.8 billion; the chain contributed 82 percent to corporate profits. About 60 percent of the volume was generated in stores opened, enlarged, or substantially remodeled in the mid-1970s. Perlmutter died in 1978 and was succeeded by Louis Lowenstein as chief executive officer of Supermarkets General. After about a year Lowenstein was removed and replaced by vice chairman Herb Brody, who shortly before his death in 1985 was succeeded by president Leonard Lieberman, who remained CEO until the company went private, co-founder Alex Aidekman remained on board as one of the CEOs until his retirement in 1987, but passed away in 1990. 1980s Pathmark sales reached $2.8 billion in 1982, when it was the nation's 10th-largest supermarket chain. Of the 121 units, 62 were Super Centers, 27 included a Barnes & Noble mini-bookstore, 19 had a cheese shop, and 13 were freestanding drug stores. Pathmark continued to dominate Supermarkets General's sales and operating profits, with 87 and 83 percent of the corporate total respectively. Pathmark opened its first Manhattan superstore, a unit, in Pike Slip, near Chinatown, in 1983. The chain was still No. 1 in the New York metropolitan area in 1985, with a 12.5 percent sales share. To foil a takeover bid by Dart Group Corp., management took Supermarkets General private in a $2.1 billion leveraged buyout in 1987, in which Merrill Lynch Capital Markets Inc. received 55 percent of the shares, Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S., 35 percent, with management retaining 10 percent. Servicing the debt ($1.6 billion in early 1990, half of it in junk bonds) soon proved a problem. The company sold 25 of its free-standing drug stores in New Hampshire and Massachusetts to the Mellville Corp., which at the time operated CVS Stores. Although corporate sales reached $6 billion in fiscal 1989 (which ended January 28, 1989), the 51-unit Rickel subsidiary was performing poorly, while Pathmark, now with 142 stores, had slipped to third place in the New York area. Many Pathmark units had become, according to a Forbes article, "unkempt, dirty, and outmoded." The article goes