Business & Finance: Nickel Plate merger

The Van Sweringen brothers conferred with stockholders of the Pere Marquette last week, immediately after their conference with the stockholders of the Erie. Next they will confer with those of the Hocking Valley and of the Chesapeake & Ohio. They seek to mollify minority stockholders who dissented so strenuously last spring from permitting their roads to join with the Van Sweringens’ Nickel Plate Railroad into a billion-dollar Nickel Plate System.

The Van Sweringens’ previous tactics had been to gain control of the directorate of the constituent lines and to force approval of the mergers. The minority stockholders, especially of the Chesapeake & Ohio, did not like that. Neither did the Interstate Commerce Commission, which forbade the merger last spring (TiME, March 15).

Erie and Pere Marquette stockholders waited avariciously for greater inducements; the C. & O. minority, which foiled the first merger plan, remained obdurate.

By the first of August the brothers expect to have soothed enough minority holders to appear most circumspectly before the I. C. C. and to have fair chances of getting that body’s approval to their Nickel Plate System.

Motors

Fiat,* largest automobile company in Europe and largest Italian industrial concern, has long poured over the Continent its gleaming metal spawn, big Fiats and little Fiats, trim town cars with square lights and snub noses, Baby Fiats that are playthings for South American debutantes, and cars like the huge grey road lizards in which Il Duce speeds from camp to campagna. The Fiat company’s ten factories make also tractors, forgings, castings, Diesel engines, electricity; employ 32,000 men; sold 40,000 cars last year; reached gross sales of $50,000,000 and net profits of almost $9,000,000. Last week in Manhattan a syndicate headed by J. P. Morgan & Co. sold $10,000,000 gold debenture 7% Fiat bonds, a syndicate that also included the First National Bank, National City Co., Guaranty Co. of N. Y., Bankers Trust Co., Lee, Higginson & Co., Glore, Ward & Co., Marshall Field. Proceeds of the issue will be used to expand the great Lingotto works at Turin, where a new scuttler will be added to the Fiat farrow—a sleek, snub, pike-pig that will sell for $635.

Walter P. Chrysler last week said that he will soon produce a new, small, four-cylinder model, the “Chrysler ’50,” that pre-orders already exceeded expected production by three months. During the six months just ended Chrysler has produced 76,773 cars (57,161 the same period last year) and disposed of practically all through their 3,749 sales outlets. Dealers and distributors, he says, have three weeks supply of cars.

The Department of Commerce last week revised its figures on world motor car consumption, announced that there were 24,000,000 in use. This in nowise alters the proportions of one car to every 71 persons in the world, to every six in the U. S. (TIME, Feb. 22).

*Fiat, through ignorance in some cases but the mere desire to save space in others, has become the U. S. Designation for F. I. A. T. These letters form a pronounceable word. Actually they are the initials of Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Italian Automobile Works of Turin). Financial ad writers last week yielded to public ignorance by using FIAT in capitals and without periods in large newspaper ads throughout the country.

Parish, Diocese

Directors of the State Bank of Chicago, faced with the decision either to remain a parochial institution or to become a diocese, even a metropolitan power, decided last week. They chose Ralph Van Vechten (brother of Author Carl Van Vetchen) their president.

Banker Van Vetchen, born in Michigan but reared in Iowa, once wished to be an author himself. But he was detoured from his yearnings by getting a job in a bank. The dignity from which he is now taken was the senior vice presidency of the Continental and Commercial National Bank of Chicago, whose only rival for the rank of greatest Chicago bank is the Illinois Merchants Trust Co.

Banker Van Vetchen’s availability as a President is not lessened by his directorates on the Nickel Plate Railroad, the Advance-Rumley Co. (agricultural implements) and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. The State Bank has resources of $66,000,000, is well organized, prodigiously profitable, but rather a neighborhood affair as great banks go at present. It hopes that Banker Van Vechten can wrap the purple of prestige about his new colleagues, lead them to diocesan power.

Curtis Publishing

For one day a fortnight ago the common stock of the Curtis Publishing Co. (Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, Country Gentleman) “led the market.” It sold above $200 a share. This was the first time that a publisher’s stock has ever done so. It was deemed remarkable until one realized that the market over which Curtis Publishing gained its leadership, in which it was the highest priced for a day, was that of unlisted securities traded over brokers’ counters. These are the precious shares whose owners esteem them too valuable for the dickerings of the stock exchange. Many a day not a share of such stocks is asked for, or offered.

The stock of the Curtis Publishing Co. is held very jealously by officials and employes of the company—by Publisher Curtis, Son-in-law E. W. Bok, Editor George Lorimer, and a few others. They dislike making a financial statement of their affairs. But to be considered at all on the Manhattan Stock Exchange a concern must file such statements at definite intervals. With this general custom Curtis Publishing has now complied. There are 900,000 shares of no par common stock and 182,707 of 1% preferred* which officials consider the equivalent of $30,000,000 capitalization. But last year the total net income was $16,040515 ($14,714,819 in 1924). The value of the concern is estimated as above $250,000,000.

*Stockholders have just decided to issue 900,000 shares of a new 1% of which200,000 shares will retire the present preferred and the remaining 700,000 will goas stock dividend to the common holders.

Notes

Vanderbilt’s Chateau in Manhattan tempted Louis Horowitz, president of Thompson-Starrett (constructors) to offer $7,100,000 last week. Builder Frederick Brown, now in Europe, thought he bought it (TIME, June 28).

Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corp. stock went to 7% dividend basis last week. This is one of the companies that almost broke Motor Car Maker John North Willys after the War. It made a financier of Inventor Aviator Glenn Hammond Curtiss.

Precious Executives. The man most heavily insured in all the world is Merchant Rodman Wanamaker of Manhattan, insured for $7,000,000. Next to him is Amusement-Purveyor William Fox ($6,000,000) and third a triumvirate of brothers, Frank P., J. B. Jr. (TIME, July 12), and Herbert V. Book of Detroit, each covered for $5,000,000.