Conspiracy's Wake

For General Electric Co.'s executive suite, which bore the brunt of the penalties in the Justice Department's electrical-industry price-fixing victory, there was more unwelcome news last week. G.E. Chairman Ralph J. Cordiner, 60, announced his resignation as chairman of the 60-man Business Advisory Council, the business community's liaison with the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Cordiner's explanation: he will need to give all his time to G.E., since he is taking over the duties of Robert Paxton, 59, who resigned last week, for reasons of ill health, as G.E. president and No. 2 man. Paxton, who underwent major surgery in January, is now recovering abroad.

Though the reasons for both resignations were plausible enough, the timing inevitably aroused speculation that they are part of the conspiracy's aftermath. G.E.'s top men have been sharply criticized by some stockholders, and at G.E.'s annual meeting April 26, stockholders will vote on a proposal to set up a committee to determine whether G.E.'s executive suite "reasonably" should have known of the conspiracy.

Chairman Cordiner also announced, in a speech at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, that G.E. is setting up "new auditing techniques" to catch any price fixes, and that "more searching questions will be asked at executive business reviews." To make sure that the brass gets the message, the G.E. legal staff will lecture at all company levels on the pitfalls in the antitrust laws.

John V. Naish, 53, resigned as president of General Dynamics Corp.'s big, highflying (Atlas missile, B58 bomber, Convair commercial jets) Convair division because of "irreconcilable differences in management philosophy." Brother of Cinemactor J. Carrol Naish, Jack Naish gave up a profitable investment counseling firm in 1941 to become an aircraft riveter at Northrop, worked up to works manager in five years. In 1949 he joined Convair, shot up to president in 1958. He liked to run his billion-dollar division his own way. Since Frank Pace Jr. took over as General Dynamics chairman, more and more of Convair's flight orders have been issued from G.D. headquarters in New York, which presumably is what Naish found irreconcilable. Replacing Naish as acting president is C. Rhoades MacBride, 50, a management consultant who joined General Dynamics three years ago, became executive vice president last year.

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