Business: Deals & Developments

Columbia to Grigsby, Grigsby-Grunow Co. of Chicago makes Majestic radios and Majestic mechanical ice boxes. Belligerently independent, it also made trouble in 1930. It sued Radio Corp. of America and associates for $30,000,000. It knows what trouble is both in & out of the office. Once it lost a $4,000,000 patent infringement suit to Magnavox Co., and last year William Carl Grunow was ousted from the presidency by his partner Bertram James Grigsby. Last week unGrunowed Grigsby-Grunow, undaunted, planned to expand, acquire Columbia Phonograph Co. by an exchange of stock. Columbia owns the U. S. properties of Columbia Graphophone Co. Ltd. which was merged with Gramophone Co. Ltd. in April to form Electric & Musical Industries, Ltd. Columbia’s properties, which will pass to Grigsby-Grunow, include U. S. factories where are made Columbia phonographs and records, and patent & trade mark rights to Columbia’s name in North & South America. The combined companies will have plants in Chicago, Bridgeport, Los Angeles, will be one of the largest makers of radio sets in the U. S. Also important: Grigsby-Grunow acquires worldwide Columbia marketing outlets. The voting trustees of Columbia Phonograph Co. who made the announcement are: President Henry Cantwell Cox, Artemus L. Gates, president of New York Trust Co., and Fred Warner Shibley, vice president of Bankers Trust Co. Columbia stockholders will get a $10 cash liquidating dividend from their own company and four and four-tenths shares of Grigsby-Grunow stock for each share held. At current prices of about $1 a share for .Grigsby-Grunow, Columbia’s 82,524 shares will thus bring some $363,000. House Changes. Year’s end is house-cleaning time in Wall Street. Partners come and go, firms merge, dissolve, start up. Most notable change of last week was Kidder, Peabody & Co.’s absorption of old Kissel, Kinnicutt & Co. Formed 66 years ago in Boston, Kidder, Peabody was long famed as a conservative New England banking house and distributor of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. shares. In 1930 the partnership was dissolved, the business liquidated. New men & money came forward, took over the old name. Both Kidder, Peabody and Kissel, Kinnicutt hold memberships in the New York Stock Exchange although the former has not occupied its seat. Kissel, Kinnicutt has been active in underwriting and banking as well as on the Exchange. New partner of Kidder, Peabody will be Gustav Hermann Kinnicutt, 54, senior member of his firm. Four of his old partners will be associated with him, two will become members in a new firm. The newly merged firm of Fenner, Beane & Ungerleider, second largest wire house, continued its expansion by acquiring the business and offices of Moyse & Barry, Stock Exchange members who became inactive Jan. 1.Indiana-Nitag. Should a tariff be placed upon petroleum and its products, hard hit would be Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, big importer. Last week Indiana expanded its foreign markets by acquiring a large interest in Germany’s N I T A G (Naphtha Industrie und Tankanlagen Aktiengesellschaft) for $1,100,000. Nitag, a distributing company, handles 420.000 bbl. of petroleum products a year. In future a large part of its needs will be filled by Indiana from its Venezuelan fields and refinery on the Island of Aruba. Last spring Indiana obtained a 50% interest in Petroleum Storage & Finance Corp. Ltd. of Manchester, England, involving delivery of 30,000.000 gal. (714,000 bbl.) of refined products in 1931.

G. E. in Australia. The electrical manufacturing companies of Australia last week combined into one big integrated group, Associated General Electrical Industries, Ltd. Participating in the deal was U. S. General Electric, its subsidiary International General Electric cooperating with Great Britain’s Associated Electrical Industries, Ltd. in which G. E. has a large interest. The new Australian company combines five manufacturing and distributing companies. It will have three subsidiaries, one in the engineering and apparatus field, another in general supplies and merchandising, a third distributing electrical refrigerators.