Personal File

sbEvery second day another new supermarket opens in Britain, and the average will soon be bettered. Reason: Britain's greatest merchant prince, Sir Isaac Wolfson, 64, has entered the field by merging William Cussons Co. into his Great Universal Stores Ltd. and plans to expand Cussons' present chain of 60 stores to at least 200 supermarkets. The son of poor Polish Jewish immigrants, Sir Isaac (he was made a baronet earlier this year for his large gifts to charity) started work in his father's Glasgow cabinetmaking shop, later set up his own furniture store in London. Picked during the Depression to run Great Universal, he has built it into the largest retailing enterprise outside the U.S.--a British blend of Sears, Roebuck and J. C. Penney that last year netted $34 million on sales of more than $560 million.

sbIn Germany's lean years after World War II, ex-General Staff Major Egon Overbeclc, now 44, financed his studies at Frankfurt University by working for Metallgesellschaft, a widely diversified industrial combine. After earning a doctorate in business administration in 1952, Overbeck stayed on with the company, began to leapfrog up the executive ladder. His big break came in 1956 when he was named chief financial and administrative officer of one of Metallgesell-schaft's major subsidiaries. He was lured away from that post by rival Mannesmann, West Germany's second largest steelmaker (after Krupp), which was searching for a bright young man to preside over its drive for diversification. Scheduled to take over as chief executive of Mannesmann Oct. 1, genial Herr Doktor Overbeck is currently studying the company's operations under the tutelage of retiring Chairman Hermann Winkhaus, 65, this week will fly off to Canada to inspect Mannesmann's steel plants there.

sbBritain's giant Distillers Company Ltd. was at a crossroads. Its sales of industrial chemicals were sagging, but its whisky sales (Vat 69, Johnnie Walker,, Haig & Haig, Black & White) were soaring. Deciding not to fight the trend, the company last week chose as its new chairman an old-line whisky man, Ronald S. Gumming, 62, a spirited Scot whose great-grandfather founded the Cardow Distillery, which later was absorbed by Johnnie Walker. Gumming, an army officer in both world wars, became a Distillers director in 1946, has been a major force in Britain's drive to export more Scotch. A onetime Scottish all-star rugby player, he is described by a close friend as a person who "enjoys life to the full--including his own product."

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