NASH and Hudson are secretly dickering to merge. The deal, involving assets of $320 million, would be the biggest auto merger since Chrysler bought Dodge in 1928. Reason for the move: the two independents think that it would help them cut costs and strengthen their sales organizations to meet intense competition expected from autos' Big Three in 1954-55. One possible bar to the merger: among Hudson's biggest stockholders is Queen Juliana of The Netherlands, who with other Dutch shareholders was able to block a purchase eight years ago by Detroit's Fisher Bros.

COLUMBIA Broadcasting System is showing off a new compatible electronic color picture tube that can be mass-produced, in sizes up to 21 inches, and will be sold for only 30% more than comparable black & white tubes. Tbs new tube will mean a drastic cut in the $750-to-$1000 price estimated for the first color sets, and possibly a big royalty jackpot for CBS.

CORPORATIONS that have wondered about the new Administration's views of tax-free gifts to charity were encouraged by President Eisenhower to be liberal. Such corporate gifts, said he, can "prove...that the private conscience and will of this country can provide greater welfare than the regimented norms and percentages of [others]." Corporations' gifts (which now total about $300 million annually), Ike added pointedly, are only about one-fifth the tax-deductible maximum allowed by law.

THE first big case of Justice Department Trustbuster Stanley Barnes will charge one of the nation's leading smelting firms with monopoly.

ALLIED Chemical & Dye Corp., one of the biggest U.S. producers of heavy chemicals, will move into the plastics industry, which has been one of Allied's best customers. For about $10 million, it bought Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co.'s Plaskon Division, which supplies resins and other molding materials to fabricators.

US. aircraft manufacturers recaptured the world's speed record when a Douglas F4D jet Skyray averaged 753.4 m.p.h. over California's Salton Sea last week, cracking an eight-day-old record of 737.3 m.p.h., set by a British pilot in a Vickers Supermarine Swift F4.

THE chlorophyll boom is collapsing as suddenly as it began. With anti-enzymes now taking the ad play, chlorophyll-toothpaste sales are slipping. Pillmakers are also cutting back output, as scientific tests blow holes in the manufacturers' first claims. With chlorophyll consumption already off 60%, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., one of the biggest chlorophyll suppliers, is planning to get out of the business.

DESPITE currency and other restrictions, private U.S. investors have sunk $3.2 billion into American-controlled foreign enterprises in the last three years, half of it in Canada. Total such stakes abroad, as of midyear: $15 billion.

BELGIUM'S Sabena Airlines, which decided to bypass Shannon, Ireland in routing transatlantic flights, quickly changed its mind. American tourists, accustomed to picking up Irish whisky at Shannon, protested so loudly that Sabena rescheduled the refueling stop.

THE American Institute of Management predicts year-round air conditioning in 2,000,000 homes within five years (v. 100,000 today), industry sales of $5 billion by 1963.

WILLIAM Zeckendorf's Webb & Knapp, the Manhattan real-estate company which bought Charlie Chaplin's Hollywood lot for $650,000, will lease the studio to television film producers, build a big new shopping center on the vacant part of the land.

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