Corporations

Last week the following newsworthy corporations made the following news:

Flintkote to Lehman. Among the far-flung assets of Sir Henri Deterding's Royal Dutch-Shell group of oil properties is an old-line U. S. building concern, Flintkote Co., makers of asbestos and asphalt shingles and roofing, building paper and other asphalt products. Sir Henri picked it up in 1928 for $8,700,000 cash, receiving the entire issue of Class B stock, which carries the right to elect a majority of Flintkote directors. The Class A stock is traded on the New York Curb Exchange, selling last week for $48 per share as against a 1932 low of $1. With $9,200,000 in assets and seven active and four inactive plants in the U. S. and Canada, Flintkote last year earned $1,300,000, a sizable improvement over the $532,000 reported for 1934.

Though Flintkote's asphalt products justified Oilman Deterding's interest in a U. S. building company, it has been reported for weeks that he was about to sell out. Last week the reports were confirmed when Flintkote filed a registration statement for an issue of common stock to replace the present Class B stock now outstanding. Upon that conversion the Class A automatically becomes plain common. When this operation is completed, two Royal Dutch affiliates, Shell Union .and N. V. de Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, will sell the Flintkote shares they will get in exchange to a banking group headed by Manhattan's Lehman Brothers, who will in turn offer the stock to the public. For the Royal Dutch interest the Lehman group will pay about $15,000,000, thereby providing Sir Henri with a profit of $6,000,000 on his U. S. building venture.

Cans & Cash. Stockholders in Carle Cotter Conway's Continental Can Co. were last week offered a chance to buy Continental Can stock at $60 a share, about $20 under the market price. Holders can buy one new share for each 15 shares now held. To be underwritten by a banking group headed by Goldman, Sachs & Co., the offering is one of the few big bids for fresh capital made in the past five years, will supply Continental Can with $10,660,000 of new cash. The company also plans to sell another 75,000 shares to employes at not less than $60 a share, should realize $4,500,000 on this transaction. Chairman Conway said that the company had spent more than $6,000,000 on new plant & plant improvement last year, that some of the new money would be used on further plant expansion, some would constitute additional working capital.

Meanwhile the Federal Trade Commission was bringing suit against Bethlehem Steel Co., American Sheet & Tin Plate Co. (U. S. Steel Corp. subsidiary), and 13 other steel concerns for refusing to sell a cheap grade of tin plate to tin can manufacturers. According to the Commission, little tin can makers could not afford to buy the better grade of plate used by American Can and Continental Can, with the result that the steel men were creating a monopoly for the No. 1 and No. 2 U. S. can makers.

Merging Machines. To most people Pratt & Whitney is a builder of airplane engines. Fact is, Pratt & Whitney's big Hartford, Conn, plants make no engines at all. The company is one of the leading U. S. manufacturers of precision machine tools and manufacturing instruments.* Moreover, Pratt & Whitney is not an independent concern but the principal asset of Niles-Bement-Pond Co. Last week Niles-Bement-Pond's principal asset was an island in flood waters, but that dampened not a whit the desire of Chairman Edward A. Deeds for a machinery merger. Expansive Chairman Deeds, who is also chairman of National Cash Register, proposed to unite Pratt & Whitney with General Machinery Corp., a $4,500,000 Hamilton, Ohio, maker of heavy tools and Diesel engines. General's management also thought a merger would be a good idea, and the two companies jointly put the proposition to their respective stockholders.

Gas to Edison. At a raucous annual meeting in Manhattan, Consolidated Gas Co. stockholders voted, 7,836,658 shares to 758 shares, to change their company's name to Consolidated Edison "to reflect more nearly the character of the business, three-quarters of which is now the sale of electricity."

* Pratt & Whitney airplane engines are made by United Aircraft Corp., which bought out the Pratt & Whitney engine-building affiliate in 1929.

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