For months, hotelmen had been quietly tilting for control of Los Angeles' luxurious Ambassador Hotel, whose 500 rooms, famed Cocoanut Grove, swimming pool and golf course have long been run by a bondholders' trust. Conrad Hilton, owner of Chicago's Stevens ("world's largest") and twelve other hotels, thought he had the inside track. Hilton started dickering last year, first offered $22 apiece for a controlling quantity of the 58,200 trust certificates issued after the hotel went bankrupt in 1935, gradually raised this to $44, with no takers.
But while he and other hotelmen...
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