To the Letter

As president of the New York Stock Exchange for 15 years, G. Keith Funston always insisted that Big Board corporations promptly report significant changes in management. Living up to the letter of that rule last week was the Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp., whose messengers appeared promptly and simultaneously at wire services, publications and TV networks to pass the word that the company's new chairman would be none other than G. Keith Funston, 56, who is retiring from the Exchange when his present contract runs out in September.

The job is not likely to tax Funston's energies. His duties will include presiding over meetings and, as Funston expressed it, "speaking out on general economic matters." He will be free to sit on other boards where there is no conflict of interest with a broadening company, which deals in 4,500 products, from shotguns to toothbrushes. The new chairman will also be free to pursue such pastimes as archaeology and golf as well as his post of senior warden at Christ Church (Episcopal) in Greenwich, Conn.

Olin Mathieson's management will remain very much in the hands of President and Chief Executive Gordon Grand Jr., 49. After the sudden death last October of Olin Chairman N. Harvey Collisson, Grand assumed that role in addition to his own duties, but will now be able to relinquish the chair. Since he took charge 22 months ago, Grand has pulled Olin Mathieson's disparate operations together into five groups, expanded its operations in 70 countries. At the time he assumed power, he forecast that the corporation would exceed $1 billion in annual sales by 1967; last week Olin Mathieson reported a 19% gain in sales, to $1.1 billion, in 1966.

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