Deals & Developments

Commodities. Wheat touched 41 7/8-c- in Chicago last week, making the 42-c- wheat tariff more than 100% protective. Cotton broke below 6-c- in Manhattan for the first time since late summer. Corn broke to 23 5/8-c- lowest since 1897. Race for Richfield. Up a notch last week went the big bidding for possession of Richfield Oil Co. of California, an insolvent company deeply entrenched in the rich Pacific Coast gasoline market. The bidding has been between Harry Ford Sinclair's Consolidated Oil Corp. and Standard Oil Co. of California, with Henry Latham Doherty's Cities Service Co. (a big Richfield stockholder) sitting ominously silent at the table. Bid No. 1 was last June when Consolidated offered $18,000,000 in securities. Standard offered $17,000,000, believing the greater popularity of its securities made the bid more attractive. Then in July the Consolidated offer was boosted to $22,250,000. Standard raised that $250,000. Last week Consolidated again took the lead with an offer equivalent to $27,600,000. Consolidated offering $10,000,000 cash to provide for dissenting creditors to Standard's $5,000,000.

Fat Coffers. Last week directors of General Motors Corp. weighed a $4,464,000 third-quarter loss--first since 1921--against $209,098,832 of cash & marketable securities still remaining in G. M.'s fat coffers, then declared the regular 25c dividend. Chrysler Corp. directors, too, balanced a $5,346,146 third-quarter loss against the company's cash & marketable securities of $51,000,000, voted the regular 25-c- payment. Next day in a radio salesmeeting over a national network Chairman Walter P. Chrysler told his 75,000 dealers and salesmen that the new Plymouth was base priced at $495, that price reductions averaged $60. Frisco Turnabout. The sprawling St. Louis-San Francisco ("Frisco") Railway Co., which owns rail enough to double-span the distance between Berlin and Bagdad, averted a receivership action two months ago. Last week it performed a turnabout. Its management went to Federal Judge Charles Breckenridge Faris of St. Louis, the judge who gave the Frisco "another chance" in the first action, and told him a tale of depleted cash, crippled borrowing power, pressing creditors. President James Malcolm Kurn was thereupon appointed receiver for the system, biggest yet to fall this Depression and third in the past year to meet its receivership in St. Louis. There was no consternation in railroad circles at this turnabout. For the receivership is both a buffer against further Frisco disaster and a doorway to future success. Other receivership suits were pending against the Frisco last week and this friendly Federal action lessened the possibility of separate receivers in several States operating at chaotic cross purposes. But complications threatened when the attorneys who had been seeking receivership for their clients protested that Judge Faris had acted beyond his jurisdiction. Judge Faris again took the problem under consideration with the observation that the Frisco had "gotten itself into an unholy snarl." Later he appointed John Gerdes Lonsdale, president of Mercantile-Commerce Bank & Trust and 1929-30 president of A. B. A., as a co-receiver with Mr. Kurn.

One Blue Ribbon. Pabst Corp., famed Milwaukee brewing house, makes Blue Ribbon (near) Beer. Premier Malt Products Co., post-War Chicago manufacturer of Prima (near) Beer, makes Blue Ribbon Malt. Last week Pabst merged with Premier. Thus the name Blue Ribbon, long a subject of litigation, became solidified under one corporate roof. Details of the merger, which involved an exchange of stock and the reincorporation of Pabst from Wisconsin to Delaware laws were not disclosed. Fred Pabst, horse & Holstein fancying president of the Milwaukee concern, was made a director of Premier, of which Pabst will henceforth be a subsidiary. Harris Perlstein remained as Premier president.

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