PERSONAL FILE

sb The chairman of billion-dollar-a-year Cities Service Co., Burl Stevens Watson, 67, drawls self-effacingly, "I'm just an average man. There's no romance in my story." But last week Alabama-bred Oilman Watson made stories all over the nation's business pages. At midweek Cities Service won an Interior Department contract to extract, process and sell to the U.S. up to $9.1 million a year worth of helium, production of which the Government previously monopolized. Next day Watson announced plans for a $108 million stock swap to acquire Columbian Carbon Co., an $80 million-a-year producer of carbon black, ink and pigments.Both moves were part of Watson's strategy to hedge Cities Service's bet in the slipping oil industry by expanding in related fields.

sb"With respect to size, no Chicago bank has grown over the last several years," grumps Chicago Banker David M. Kennedy, 56, hitting at the archaic state law that forbids any Illinois bank to open branches. Seeking another way to grow, Kennedy's Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust Co. (assets: $2.8 billion) this week will absorb the neighboring City National Bank & Trust Co. (assets: $385 million). The merger will make Continental Chicago's largest bank--just ahead of First National. But there may be trouble coming: though the Treasury Department approved the merger to help out slipping City National, Justice Department trustbusters have warned Chairman Kennedy that they may later sue to break up the marriage.

sb An Illinois boy who has made his mark in Canada, Theodore Jonathan Emmert, 45, likes to play parlor games that involve the element of chance, almost invariably wins by swiftly reckoning the mathematical probabilities. Last week Emmert took on a job that calls for both skill and luck: the presidency of A. V. Roe Canada Ltd., a $270 million complex that produces aircraft, steel, engines and buses. Because Canada makes no missiles, Roe has fared worse than most planemakers in the switch away from aircraft; last year its sales fell 27% to $242 million. Emmert, who began as a production-line worker at Seattle's Boeing plant and became executive vice president of Ford of Canada at 34, plans to push Roe's recent diversification into vending machines and aluminum boats.

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