Downtown

P: Colonel Jacob Ruppert, prizefight loving bachelor, owner of Manhattan's most victorious ball club, the New York Yankees, did not in the beginning of the Depression have the big, profitable, post-Prohibition brewing business that he has today. Yet he made a bold decision. He announced that he would back his faith in Manhattan real estate by buying any properties that appealed to him. Last week the Colonel bought the 23-story Hoagland Building on Madison Avenue at 40th Street, and Manhattan did not accuse him of being late in fulfilling his promise. Rather, Manhattan noted that he had completed an unusual list of depression acquisitions and was carrying on. Today his Manhattan real estate holdings are estimated to have an assessed value of $35,000,000. His biggest Depression purchases: February 1931, 36-story building on the site of famed Delmonico's on Fifth Avenue--formerly occupied by the Bank of United States but now the Ruppert Building; January 1932, the 35-story boom-built Commerce Building at Third Avenue and 44th Street.

P: Three weeks ago when the Federal Trade Commission opened its books for the registration of new securities offerings (TIME, July 17), Massachusetts Investors Trust (Boston) was first to file. The new law requires exhaustive information about the issuing company and imposes such horrendous penalties for any omissions or inaccuracies that directors and underwriters have trembled as they composed their prospectuses. Last week Massachusetts Investors Trust issued its prospectus for the shares it intends to sell and boldly took the bull by the horns. Businessmen noted that in place of the old familiar formula ("The information contained herein is not guaranteed but is compiled from sources which we believe to be reliable"), a wholly different formula had been substituted:

"The trustees collectively and individually accept responsibility for the accuracy of the information given in this prospectus to the full extent provided in the Federal Securities Act."

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