Downtown

P: Imitating Barren Collier who compromised with his creditors (TIME, June 12), another overburdened tycoon, cinema's Jesse Louis Lasky, last week filed a debtor's petition under the new Federal bank ruptcy act. He listed assets of $134,000, liabilities of $2,020,000, laid his troubles to having personally guaranteed bond issues for Manhattan's Fifty-Seventh Street Building Co. and Eighth Avenue Building Corp. Said he: "I feel that I have been more than fair with all my creditors, for in order to pay the charges on the properties above mentioned. I have had to borrow and otherwise sacrifice. I am very willing, and intend to turn over all my assets to liquidate the remaining amounts which I may owe so that I may. unencumbered and unmolested, devote myself from now on to the interest of making better motion pictures." P: William Wrigley Jr. Co. declared four dividends on its chewing gum business-- one payable in each of the next four months--at the extraordinary rate of 26 30/95-c- per share. Not so complicated as it looks, the new rate will result in stockholders getting a monthly dividend of 25-c- per share as formerly. The odd addi- tion merely represents the 5% tax on dividends collected at source under the new tax law. Thus the Wrigley Co. simplified the problem of figuring out shareholders' dividends, absorbed the tax itself, set a precedent.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.