HIGH FINANCE: Infallible Strategist?

Since the spring of 1957, law-enforcement agencies have been trying to unravel the complex dealings of Fancy Financier Lowell McAfee Birrell, 52, who promoted his way to control of 40 companies, mainly through top posts at Swan-Finch Oil Corp. and Doeskin Products, Inc. Last week a New York County grand jury indicted Birrell on 69 counts of grand larceny, alleged that he stole stock worth $14 million from the two companies.

Birrell, a Presbyterian minister’s son and a lawyer, began his jiggery-pokery after he got control of Swan-Finch in 1954. He increased the oil company’s shares and exchanged them for the assets of other firms. The indictment charges that one of his biggest coups, the exchange of 700,000 shares of Doeskin Products stock in 1957 for 1,140,390 shares of Keta Gas & Oil Co., a Swan-Finch subsidiary, was accomplished “by presenting a fraudulent document.” Birrell, the indictment charges, signed papers that he would not sell the Doeskin stock publicly, then went ahead and disposed of some of it at reduced prices through agents. He pledged the rest of the Doeskin shares as collateral for loans. When the loans fell due, the moneylenders sold the stock to satisfy their claims. Through such tactics, Birrell personally is alleged to have made $3,000,000 at the expense of the stockholders.

Stocky (5 ft. 8 in., 200 Ibs.), well-tailored Birrell has not been seen in the U.S. since November 1957, when he failed to answer a warrant for his arrest in a Securities and Exchange Commission case involving Swan-Finch. Since then he reportedly has been in Havana and other foreign capitals leading a fast and elegant existence, always with a beautiful girl on his arm.

Birrell’s New York lawyer has said he will advise Birrell to come home and fight the case. But convicting him will be no easy task because of the intricacy of his maneuvers. Said John Devaney, chief of the New York SEC’s fraud division: “Birrell’s strategy is well-nigh infallible.”