Ford & I. G. F.

To thrifty Germans came last week a disappointment. From them was suddenly snatched away what looked like a surely profitable investment. They had intended to buy, at 109 marks ($26) per share, some 54,500 shares in Henry Ford's German company. With this company, as with his other continental subsidiaries, Mr. Ford had intended to keep 60% of the stock in the hands of Ford of England, the parent and leader of his European family. The other 40% he was to distribute among German citizens. Inasmuch as stock in the other Ford companies had invariably enjoyed a rapid rise from its offering quotation, Berliners felt confident that a log-mark share would soon be selling at 200 or 250 marks. Then, unexpectedly, came the announcement that instead of selling the new issue by popular subscription. Mr. Ford was allowing it all to go to I. G. Farbenindustrie, Germany's famed Dye Trust. Furthermore, I. G. F.'s President, Carl Bosch, co-developer of the Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixation process, became Chairman of the Ford German company. Thus not the German people but the German Dye Trust became Ford associates. Thus Mr. Ford chose to make a financial instead of a popular alliance.

The Ford-I. G. F. combination followed closely upon I. G. F.'s establishment of a U. S. Subsidiary which included among its directorate National City's Charles Mitchell, International Acceptance's Paul Warburg, Standard Oil of New Jersey's Walter Teagle, Ford's Edsel Ford (TIME, May 6). Just as this linking of interests had been interpreted as a linking of Standard Oil and I. G. F. to compete actively with the du Pont interests, so the Ford-I. G. F. consolidation was considered a Standard Oil-Ford-I. G. F. alliance against du Pont and General Motors.

Perhaps hardest hit by the merger, however, was the German motor car industry which, with its largest unit (Opel) already a General Motors affiliate, and with one of its most menacing invaders (Ford) now backed by the resources of Germany's largest company, appeared more than ever unable to hold its own against U. S. competition. One outstanding difference between the General Motors-Opel and the Ford-I. G. F. arrangements was that General Motors bought into Opel, whereas I. G. F. bought into Ford. To discuss these international operations in warlike terms, the Ford-I. G. F. purchase represented a Teuton, not a U. S. aggression. Both the I. G. F. Delaware corporation and the I. G. F. interest in German Ford represented not the almightiness of the Dollar but the renewed potency of the Mark.