Business: Anaconda Magnesium

Young (36) Senator Berkeley Lloyd Bunker of Nevada is a serious Mormon ex-Bishop who looks like Tyrone Power and is more often seen than heard on the floor of the Senate. Since he took the late silver Senator Key Pittman’s place two years ago, he has made the headlines on only one subject: Nevada’s huge Government-financed magnesium plant, world’s largest (rated capacity: 112,000,000 Ib. a year, 3½-times U.S. output last year), which went into production last month.

First time Senator Bunker jumped into the news with magnesium (TIME, April 20) he had a scandal story that sizzled even long-untouchable Jesse Jones: he charged that Basic Magnesium Inc., which had contracted to build and run the plant for the Government’s Defense Plants Corp., had bargained so well with Banker Jones that it stood to make a 4,280% profit on its investment. Jesse harrumphed about “statements unworthy of a U.S. Senator . . . false and misleading,” and the public forgot. In any case, the exorbitancy of the fees Jesse allowed Basic Magnesium Inc. depended largely on whether you figured it as a percentage of what the new operation was costing the Government (then estimated at $70,000,000) or on Bunker’s estimate of B.M.’s own original investment ($50,000).

But last week Berkeley Bunker came up with some news that really put B.M. into the big time. He said he had heard “reliably” that huge Anaconda Copper Co. was buying B.M. “lock, stock and barrel” for $75,000,000, that its former owners were getting $1,000,000 from Defense Plants Corp. on the deal, although the Government’s bill for building the plant would now run over $100,000,000 rather than $70,000,000. Even so, said Senator Bunker darkly, “the Government can consider itself lucky to get out of this thing.”

As the week wore on Berkeley Bunker’s big news was surrounded with hunks of silence: B.M.’s President Howard P. Eells Jr. said no one could talk but Anaconda; Anaconda said it had nothing to say; Jesse Jones did not even say that much. But if Senator Bunker’s information was right (and at week’s end no one had yet denied it) it was important: for the first time one of the great old-line metal producers was getting into light metal production in a big way.