Changes of the Week

P: Frank O. Prior, 59, was named president of Standard Oil Co. (Indiana), replacing Alonzo W. Peake, 64, who will retire May 3 after 34 years with the company, ten as president. (Robert E. Wilson remains board chairman.) In his climb up the ladder, Prior often moved on to the rung vacated by Peake. A Stanford engineering graduate (1919), Prior started work as an oilfield laborer for Midwest Refining, where Peake was an oilfield superintendent. Shortly after, Standard bought Midwest, and as Peake moved up, Prior followed. In 1928, Peake was made president of another Standard subsidiary, Dixie Oil, and when he was shifted to the parent company in 1930, Prior succeeded him. Later that year, when Standard merged Dixie and two other companies into Stanolind Oil & Gas Co., Prior was the first president. Under him, Stanolind's oil reserves were increased ten times. In 1945, he moved to the parent company, became vice president in charge of production, and in 1951 executive vice president.

P: Stuyvesant Peabody, Jr., 40, resigned as board chairman of Chicago's Peabody Coal Co., the second biggest U.S. commercial producer. (First: Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Co.) "Stuyve" Peabody was president from 1946 until last year, when the board of directors, alarmed by a $636,855 loss in the fiscal year ending April 1954. moved him up to board chairman and put Executive Vice President Otto Gressens, 57, in as president. Gressens, who had been hired away from Illinois Commonwealth Edison in 1951, cut costs by closing some mines in southern Illinois, expects to report earnings of $1,200,000 for the year ending April 1955. Peabody, who disagreed on the way to run the company, said that his family has been selling its interest, and that the company will soon be "Peabody in name only."

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