Business & Finance: Personnel: Oct. 23, 1933

Last week the following were news: Signius Wilhelm Poul (William) Knudsen, 54, head of General Motors’ Chevrolet division, was made executive vice president in charge of all GM’s manufacturing operations in the U. S. and Canada. A Dane from Copenhagen, he emigrated to the U. S. at 21, got a job in a shipyard, worked for Erie R. R., then shot up as an assembly man for Henry Ford. Quitting as manager of all Ford plants in 1921, he soon joined Chevrolet. A tall, slightly stooped man with a big walrus mustache, Motorman Knudsen is a genius of production and a hero to all good Danish schoolboys. John C. van Eck, president of Royal Dutch-Shell’s big U. S. subsidiary, Shell Union Oil Corp., was elected to the speciallycreated post of executive committee chairman. He was succeeded by R. G. A. van der Woude, Dutch-born head of a Shell subsidiary.