Corporations: Making Money

The American Bank Note Co. is a staid old institution that makes money by making money. The oldest and richest of the three U.S. firms that still print bank notes, it is a sort of job-lot treasurer that churns out paper money for 55 nations around the world, including Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt and Guatemala. From its presses last year 25 million stock certificates and 7.5 million bonds, all the travelers’ checks for American Express and four other firms, corporate checks for more than 2,000 of the nation’s largest firms, and postage stamps for 65 nations.

Bank Note is kept busy these days filling orders for money from young nations and performing rush jobs for some old nations ravaged by inflation. Last week its printing plant in New York City’s Bronx was busy printing a rush order of 5,000-cruzeiro notes (present value: $1) for inflation-ridden Brazil. “We really prefer a well customer to a sick one,” says Chairman and President W. Frederic Colclough, 57, who runs the company’s five plants (three U.S., one Canadian, one British), from a colonnaded granite building near Wall St. But, naturally, since inflation starts the printing presses rolling, he concedes: “We have mixed feelings.” Well they might: last year Bank Note’s sales hit a record $26.4 million and profits a new high of $1,900,000.

Body Blows. Although it took its present corporate form in 1911, Bank Note likes to trace its history back through 50-odd companies to a colonial engraver named Robert Scot. Until the Federal Bureau of Engraving and Printing opened in 1862. the company printed virtually all U.S. currency. A changing world usually means good times for Bank Note, but change has also dealt the company some severe blows. It lost its biggest customer for paper money when China went Communist in 1949, lost another big customer two years ago when Cuba’s Castro switched to Czech-printed money. Bank Note does not think much of Cuba’s new currency. “It’s not secure, not secure at all,” sniffs Colclough.

As an earlier president once declared, “the greatest asset of this company is its mystery.” Bank Note has always been extraordinarily concerned with security, keeps its premises closely guarded. With half of its business now in printing securities for such corporate giants as A.T.& T., General Motors. Du Pont and General Electric, it often knows months in advance that a company is planning a stock split or a new bond issue—information Wall Street speculators would love to have. And to foil counterfeiters, it uses special paper embedded with colored disks, mixes its own inks, and even makes its own special presses. Every item is counted and recorded 33 times from raw paper to finished product, and rejects are cremated in blazing furnaces.

Subtle Tone. Mostly, however, Bank Note depends on the skills of its 33 engravers to carve into steel the distinctive drawings and intricate designs that counterfeiters find hard to duplicate. This art has produced a special style, replete with folded robes, bare-chested men, and half-naked women who seem to be a cross between a Wagnerian soprano and the White Rock nymph. Stock Exchange regulations, in fact, insist that vignettes on stock certificates include a human figure with visible areas of flesh. The subtle tone of fleshy areas and the folds of robes are thought to be the hardest features to copy.