Jeff H. Reynolds, who is seeking control of financially struggling Bond Corp. Holdings Ltd. in return for a $197 million investment, has a business address that is a mail-drop. His U.S. company, Weatherby Investments Inc., does not appear to be traded publicly as he contends, officials said Monday. The 28-year-old Texan, little known on the investment scene, said in a news release last week that he was negotiating with Bond Holdings, the Australian holding company. The release listed an answering service as a contact number. The answering service forwarded calls about the offer to Reynolds mother's house in Houston, where he discussed his business and personal history in a telephone call Monday morning. Messages left in later follow-up calls to a brother and an answering machine at the house were not returned. Among the unanswered questions are: _Why his news release said his Weatherby Investments Inc. is an over-the-counter stock and why he said it was traded over-the-counter on the ``pink sheet'' distributed by the National Quotation Bureau. The National Quotation Bureau and the National Association of Securities Dealers have no record of Weatherby, and it is not listed in guides to over-the-counter stocks. Reynolds said Monday Weatherby had earlier been known as California Pacific Industries, and he intended to change the name back. But there was no listing under that name either. _Why the address and suite to which investors are invited to send questions is a private mail-drop box in Beverly Hills, a year-and-a-half after Reynolds says he moved his operations from Texas to California. In the conversation early Monday, Reynolds said his work was done from several offices, including an unspecified location in Century City, but he gave no address and said he is still looking for a central location. Reynolds describes himself as an intensely private businessman, who used to walk in his bankers' side doors because he favored jeans and cutoffs. He says he still feels more comfortable in a sweatsuit, crunching numbers at a computer terminal, than in a suit and tie. ``I've always had a real hardcore attitude about other businesses and banks _ if they're going to deal with me they're going to have to know me and put up with me,'' he said. ``I'm not going to fit into their world.'' Bond, the holding company whose Australian brewing interests are in the hand of receivers, says it will listen to offers from Reynolds, who says Weatherby is a division of Singapore-based California Pacific International Pte Ltd. Reynolds says he is descended from a long line of oilmen in Throckmorton, Texas, and locals there say books have been written about the Reynolds clan and its intermarriages with the even more famous Matthews cattle and oil family. Reynolds said he took freshman English and biology classes at the University of Texas and a few business classes at various colleges before succumbing to entrepreneurial urges. He got started in business by importing ``gray market'' cars, upgrading them to meet American standards and selling them at a profit, he said. ``Actually I was living in Austin and a few of my frat brothers got in with me,'' Reynolds said. ``We had some cash flow and it looked pretty good and I said, `The hell with this' (college career).'' As it stands now, he says he's confident he can find refinancing for Bond's $6 billion debt. Bond says it wants to see more details, and skeptics in the international investment community say they have never heard of Reynolds or his operations. Reynolds says he got a real-estate broker's license in Texas in 1983 and got involved in development companies. He also says he has dabbled in a clay-tile factory in France.
