Time Clock, may 9, 1955

• Share

INTEREST RATES are on the way up. To help refinance $6.4 billion in Government securities coming due soon (most of it in one-year, 1⅛% certificates), the Treasury Department will pay 2% interest on a new $3.9 billion short-term issue running for 15 months. The big private finance companies (among them: General Motors Acceptance Corp., C.I.T. Financial Corp., Commercial Credit) are also boosting the rate they pay when they borrow on commercial paper, will now pay another ⅛% interest (to 1¾%) on 30-to 90-day notes, the third such jump in a month.

WESTINGHOUSE will lose its job as a supplier of Navy jet engines because of development troubles. After calling off work on the 10,000-lb.-thrust J40 engine (originally slated to power the Grumman F10F, Douglas F4D, etc.), the Navy has now announced that production of the smaller J46 (about 6,000-lb.-thrust) engine used in the Chance Vought F7U Cutlass will run out towards the end of the year, thus eliminating Westinghouse from the Navy engine program.

STEEL PRICES will rise this year regardless of wage increases, predicts E. T. Weir, chairman of National Steel Corp. Rising consumption, he said, is forcing the industry into new and costly expansion programs; steel requires a larger investment per dollar of income than most other industries, and steelmakers' current return on assets is about 9.4% v. an average 12.4% for the rest of U.S. industry.

FRENCH ECONOMIC GAINS are pushing the Paris stock market ahead at an even faster clip than the U.S. bull market, largely because Frenchmen who once sent their funds abroad are now investing at home. Stocks on the Paris Bourse are 240% above the 1949 average, with a $2.3 billion gain since 1952; the averages climbed by 60% last year alone, have soared another 22% in 1955's first four months.

FARM SURPLUS has been whittled in a $5,800,000 deal with Argentina. Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson has sold off about 44 million Ibs. of surplus cottonseed oil, nearly 15% of the total 260 million Ibs. the Government bought under price props.

GLEN ALDEN CORP., biggest anthracite producer (1954 sales: $74 million), is ready to diversify into other businesses. First step, just completed, is the $11,000,000 ($1.5 million cash, $8 million out of future earnings plus 100,000 shares of stock) purchase of Fort Worth's Mathes Co., which makes heat pumps, air conditioners and fans. Glen Alden is also dickering for three more companies, one to put it into oil and gas, the other two into electronics.

LOW-COST COLOR TV is getting closer. In June Hallicrafters Co. will start sending dealers a new color set with a 21-in. RCA tube and a price tag of $695, nearly $200 under the cost of present sets.

CIGARETTE-SMOKING is on the way up again after a 7 % slump in the past two years. P. Lorillard and American Tobacco, with 40% of U.S. cigarette output, report first-quarter sales increases of 2% to 3%. Largely because of a big jump in filtertips (now 20% of the market), tobacco-men predict that overall cigarette sales will climb 5% above 1954's 368 billion total by year's end.