Downtown

P: Last week a petition was filed in a Brooklyn Federal Court by Eggs Inc. of Smithtown Branch, L. I. seeking permission for a reorganization under the new bankruptcy law. A Manhattan newspaper promptly headlined the item: EGGS (INC.) BUSTED. A quality poultry farm handling as many as 100,000 chickens, 1,000,000 eggs a year. Eggs, Inc. sold pheasants to New York's famed restaurateur, Henri Charpentier, who insisted that they be killed on the wing. It gave them a special flavor to be shot down while tense, said he. President Edwin J. Walker of Eggs, Inc. took live birds to nearby hunt clubs, induced sportsmen to shoot them down for him. He declared last week that Eggs, Inc. was not "busted." It simply wanted to reorganize.

P: Last week Armour & Co. stockholders voted to accept the reorganization plan sponsored by President Thomas George Lee and Boston's crusty septuagenarian Banker Frederick Henry Prince, Armour's largest stockholder (TIME, June 11). Chief item is a $55,000,000 write-down in assets to improve earnings, cut depreciation charges $2,150,000. Stated capital is reduced from $157,231,000 to $20m723.000 by the substitution of two classes of stock for three.

P: Since Depression, many a State Banking Board has stopped asking for reports of condition from state banks. New York's Board has not issued a call since late in 1932. But not until last week did the Federal Government officially presume to ask a solvent state bank for a report of condition. Then it requested information of deposits, loans, assets and liabilities as of June 30 from 7,567 state bank members of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It sent out a similar request to Federal Reserve Bank members. When the reports come in, the Treasury will have information on 13,894 banks, 94% of all the banks in the U. S.

P: Last week Boston's biggest bank, First National (assets: $694,000,000), celebrated a sesquicentennial. In 1903 First National merged with the Massachusetts Bank which was founded in 1784 by six bewigged gentlemen-patriots who, admitting that banking was "quite novel to them all," wrote to the Bank of North America in Philadelphia for advice. James Bowdoin, Governor of Massachusetts during Shays' Rebellion, was first president, Paul Revere an early depositor. Unlike Manhattan's Bank of New York & Trust Co. which has merged only once in 150 years, First National has absorbed through seven mergers the businesses of 46 banks since acquiring Massachusetts Bank, is today ninth biggest in the land.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.