BUSINESS ABROAD: From Suez to Sahara

The Suez Canal Co., which has been a hen without a nest since Egypt nationalized its big ditch, last week voted itself another career. In Paris, founder stockholders formally launched, the company into new business worlds as a French investment trust corporation. The Suez Canal Co. will invest $2,800,000 in French companies digging for oil in Algerian Sahara, and already owns a 30% chunk of the planned English Channel tunnel project. Other projects under consideration: oil ventures in Canada, iron deposits in North Africa.

The company refused to liquidate principally because it must remain in existence in order to press for compensation totaling $560 million from Nasser’s Egypt. Liquidation would also complicate the unfreezing of $200 million in assets blocked in the U.S., Great Britain and Switzerland since Suez, and would probably force stockholders to pay French taxes of up to 65% on liquidation proceeds. As matters stand, the company has an estimated $280 million in hand to devote to its projects, but with almost three times that amount tied up outside France, the success of its new role depends very much on whether it can retrieve the value of its frozen and nationalized assets.