Receiverships

Two receiverships last week made news: P: Studebaker Corp., famed automakers of South Bend, Ind. were put in receivership, but not by the slow and common process of financial decay. Considering the general state of the automobile business, Studebaker had not done badly (loss for the first nine months of 1932 was $4,390,000). Last week it claimed assets exceeding liabilities by over $70,000,000. It entered a friendly receivership for technical reasons. Last autumn Studebaker attempted to acquire White Motor Co. (TIME, Sept. 26). When 95% of the White stockholders agreed, Studebaker borrowed $14,900,000 on its note to purchase the assets of White; then 3% of White stockholders protested, held up the transaction. Result: Studebaker, not yet having obtained title to White's assets, found its own credit stretched to a point where it could not obtain its normal seasonal financing.

P:Not technical but as bad-smelling as any recent receivership was that of the famed mortgage bond vendors, S. W. Straus & Co. Inc. Last week two receivers (one of them William A. Calder, former U. S. Senator), appointed to try to do something for the holders of $380,000,000 of securities sold by the firm, threw up their jobs saying that there was nothing they could do for the public. Straus & Co. had not guaranteed the bonds and. the receivers added, ''We find after a preliminary investigation that S. W. Straus & Co. is simply a shell!"

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