Business & Finance: Mitchell Out

In Wall Street there are two Mitchells. Both made headline news last week. One bids fair to continue to do so for some time (see p. 12). The other made what was probably his last. Sidney Zollicoffer Mitchell resigned as board chairman of Electric Bond & Share Co., whose vast utility empire he had ruled for nearly 30 years.

For the past two years Utilitarian Mitchell, now 71, has been in ill health, and it was this that he gave last week as his reason for retiring. He announced that he would soon sever all business connections including directorships in some 35 companies. Clarence Edward Groesbeck, his president, was picked to succeed him. And for Chairman Groesbeck the job will not be easy, for Bond & Share’s four big affiliated holding companies, American Power & Light, National Power & Light, Electric Power & Light, American Gas & Electric, must deal with a louder demand for rate reductions than ever reached Chairman Mitchell’s ears. Its one subsidiary, American & Foreign Power (which owns no U. S. properties), has long been deep in Depression.