Mergers: Bid for New Membership

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With a current roster of just 60 members, corporations with sales of $1 billion or more a year form U.S. business' most exclusive club. Last week, noting a mutual dependence on that "ever renewable natural resource, the tree," Manhattan's U.S. Plywood Corp. (annual sales: $541,349,000) and Hamilton, Ohio's Champion Papers Inc. ($456,313,000) announced a merger that, with normal growth, should easily create a new member of the club. With stockholders' approval, Champion Papers President and Chairman Karl R. Bendetsen, 58, and U.S. Plywood President Gene C. Brewer, 52, will head the new family tree—to be known as U.S. Plywood-Champion Papers, Inc.—as chairman and president.