The Capitalist Challenge: CAPITAL OPPORTUNITIES

BUSINESSMEN never forget that the chief business of business is business. Whether gathered in small groups in the crowded lobby of the Fairmont Hotel, over cocktails in hotel suites or striding along San Francisco’s streets, they found themselves working through the practicability of deals that ringed the globe, rang with the names of every free-world currency.

The little man’s awe of the tycoons soon rubbed off. Prime targets such as Nelson Rockefeller, RCA’s David Sarnoff and Marcel Palmaro, head of Lehman Bros.’ foreign department, were soon being buttonholed by Burmese industrialists, Taiwan manufacturers, Brazilian bankers. Projects from underdeveloped countries eager for foreign capital were produced by the hatful. India is ready to open its great bamboo forest in the Mysore province for paper and pulp production if it can get $8,500,000 in foreign exchange in return for half ownership. India’s Orissa province needs $1,500,000 in foreign capital to build a $3,700,000 brick and ceramic factory, which after two years should yield a tax-free dividend of 10%. Puerto Rico has a private investor who wants capital for a $2,000,000 tire plant. Thailand needs a cannery and food-freezing plant.

Pink Hats for Wooing. Among the busiest hustlers were the twelve Burmese delegates, all in their native garb of longyi (skirt) and gaung baung (pink gauze cap). Said U Tin U, private businessman and government mining adviser: “I am here to woo American miners. I want to convince them of the possibilities of exploitation of my country.” He pointed out that Burma’s government-sponsored Foreign Investment Act, which is expected to be passed early next year, will open up the country’s nationalized lead, coal, zinc, tungsten and tin mines to private operation on a lease from the government. U Tin U himself has applied for the Lone Chang zinc mine, announced that he was willing and able to put 200,000 Burmese kyats ($16,000) into its development, wants a foreign partner.

From Taiwan came Feng-Jang Leu, managing director of the China Artificial Fiber Corp. in Tapei, which manufactures five tons of rayon filament a day, netted some 20% on its $2,000,000 gross last year. He wants a backer with $1,000,000 to build a mill that will ‘produce 15 tons a day of fiber, his raw material, thus fill his own needs and those of other Taiwan firms.

Profits in Bottles. Some projects were agreed on in short order. One notable example: a syndicate to finance a $9,000,000 pulp-and-paper mill in Pernambuco, Brazil, set up by Norbert A. McKenna, partner in Wall Street’s Reynolds & Co., and Roberto de Oliveira Campos, representing Brazil’s National Economic Development Bank. And for some doubters, some of the best evidence of the opportunities for foreign investments comes from U.S. and Canadian businessmen who were stationed or have traveled abroad. Among the most persuasive:

¶Pretty, smartly gowned Mrs. Robert North, 37, now secretary of the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand, who went there as the wife of a Hollywood screen writer in 1950. She stayed on after his death to run her own bottling and solid carbon dioxide works by putting up $10,000 herself, raising the other $150,000 in local funds. Worth of her business today:$350,000. Yearly profit: upwards of $30,000.

¶William L. Graham, 46, back from starting a brush fire for capitalism with his modest Private Enterprises Inc. in India (TIME, Aug. 12), who in three days in San Francisco lined up a U.S. fund of $250,000 and got an offer from Indian Industrialist and Banker G. D. Birla to match the sum, thus making half a million dollars available for small business ventures in India.

¶William Augustus Richardson Jr., 37, round-the-world Canadian mining and prospecting share operator (TIME, Feb. 4), who lined up so many interesting possibilities that he is taking off on a firsthand inspection trip to Japan, New Caledonia, Australia, Indonesia, Burma and Thailand. He said he can raise $200 million if the mining ventures pan out. Among the possibilities: a $7,000,000 to $9,000,000 deal with Bulent Yazici, executive vice president of Turkey’s Industrial Development Bank, to build Turkey’s first chrome-plating mill.