Business: Canco Case

Last year when American Can registered with the Securities & Exchange Commission it marked certain exhibits "confidential." One exhibit was a list of salaries paid Canco's executives, another data on sales. Like dozens of other companies that filed confidentially, Canco defended its secrecy before the SECommissioners and lost.

Canco appealed to a U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Among arguments ad- vanced before this tribunal was the claim that publication of sales figures would give competitors a clue to Canco's profit margins, thus precipitating price wars which would ruin little can companies. Last week, sitting in Philadelphia, Judge Joseph Whitaker Thompson granted Canco's plea for a temporary injunction against SEC pending further arguments, this time on the constitutionality of the Securities Exchange Act. Only other pending challenge of the 1934 Act was filed recently by Pittsburgh's Mesta Machine, builder of steelmaking machinery.