Investments: The Flight of the Five

In Rome last week, the controlling interest in Italinvest, a newly organized food-processing and marketing company, passed into unlikely hands. The purchaser: Hawaii's Castle & Cooke, Inc. through its pineapple-growing subsidiary, the Dole Corp. Along with the other famed old companies that constitute Hawaii's Big Five,* Castle & Cooke was busily transferring as much of its stake as possible away from the land of aloha.

Caught by the Century. Founded by Yankee missionaries and traders in the mid-19th century, the Big Five long turned fat profits with their sugar and pineapple plantations,...