Business & Finance: Banks Bigger

An investor with $5,000 cash can buy outright about 55 shares of the ''average" stock, since the price of all the issues on the Exchange board averages about $90. Yet this same investor could not purchase even a single share of Manhattan's First National Bank, which last week rose 1,200 points in two days and reached a quotation of $7,300 a share. As George F. Baker, board chairman of First National, is said to hold 20,000 shares (there are only 100,000 outstanding) the 1,200-point rise gave him a paper profit of 24 million dollars. Meanwhile shares in Chase, Equitable, and many...

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