Mergers

Equitable-Seaboard. To a Manhattan blase with bank mergers, the union of Equitable Trust Co. with Seaboard National Bank (the unwieldy new name is Equitable Seaboard Bank & Trust Co.) created no furor. Yet the new institution ranked as fifth largest U. S. bank* with resources of approximately 900 million dollars. The new bank will operate under a state trust company charter, thus marking the passing of another (Seaboard) national bank. Merger terms specified exchange of 1 1/2 shares of Equitable for one of Seaboard, the Seaboard share carrying with it a share of Seaboard National Corp., the bank's security affiliate. Seaboard's President Chellis A. Austin continues as president of the merged bank; Equitable's President Arthur W. Loasby becomes Board Chairman. Said the official statement: "logical alliance . . . substantially multiply measure of service." RKO-Proctor. "I am going to get right after this thing," said, last winter newly-elected Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp.'s President Hiram Staunton Brown, onetime leather man (TIME, Dec. 10). Results of getting after it were last week evident with the Radio-Keith-Orpheum purchase of the F. F. Proctor theatre chain (eleven vaudeville houses in and around New York).

In the retirement of Frederick Freeman Proctor, Manhattan lost its oldest vaudeville tycoon. In the early '90s, Mr. Proctor went into partnership with the late Charles Frohman, and from this agreement resulted the famed old Charles Frohman Stock Company. In 1893, the Proctor 23rd Street Theatre (then up town) inaugurated continuous (10 a. m.-11 p. m.) performances. Before entering the vaudeville business, Mr. Proctor ran an unsuccessful Ten-Twenty-Thirty melodrama chain, and before that toured Europe as a circus acrobat. He was born in Dexter, Me., and began his career in the extremely unhistrionic capacity of errand boy at Boston's R. H. White Co.

*Larger: National City Chase National Guaranty Trust of Manhattan and Continental Illinois of Chicago.