Quick Quarter-Billion

While Tory John Diefenbaker shouted "Buccaneers!" and Trade Minister C. D. Howe roared "Who's going to stop us?", Canada's Liberals a year ago bulled legislation through Parliament for a pipeline to carry natural gas across the country from the Alberta fields. Though Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Ltd. was a private enterprise, the Liberal government generously agreed to build the Northern Ontario section of the line, which the promoters gloomily called "uneconomic," and even lent Trans-Canada $50 million when it claimed to be hard up. Only last week did the full measure of the big deal come clear: before a whiff of gas has moved eastward, backers of the pipe network have piled up more than a quarter of a billion dollars in stock-market gains.

The five original companies backing the line, headed by Texan Clint Murchison, invested some $15 million in stock at the insiders' price of $8 a share. These holdings are now worth $43 a share, or $82 million. Influential speculators got big chunks of the $37.5 million public issue, which is now worth $161 million. Fantastic speculative profits were also made in three companies set up to gather or distribute the gas Trans-Canada will bring. Vancouver Oilman Ralph K. Farris, son of a Liberal Senator and founder of the Northern Ontario Natural Gas Co., paid $300 for stock now worth $750,000. Two insiders invested $12,012 in stock now priced at $3,200,000. Quebec Natural Gas Co., another distributor, made $32.2 million in paper profits, and again the big chunk went to insiders. By contrast, the Alberta government thoroughly policed the Alberta Gas Trunk Line Co., and waitresses and farm hands all got a share of profits that now total $45.9 million.

The grand total of paper profits from the four companies, based on last week's stock prices, came to $300,691,246. The companies' biggest worry now is the angry glint in the eye of John Diefenbaker, the country's new Prime Minister, which might lead to a royal commission to find out who all the lucky insiders were.

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