By purchase, consolidation and merger, last week, units of many a U. S. industry were juggled into new and piquant positions. Of these deals, the most significant follow:
Power. For years engineers have prophesied a day when utility companies would be so integrated that the richest sources of power (like Niagara, the St. Lawrence, the Susquehanna) will be connected in one great, centrally-controlled system. Only by such unification can electric energy become generally abundant and cheap. Last week their super-power era seemed perceptibly nearer.
J. P. Morgan & Co., Drexel & Co., Bonbright & Co. announced the formation of United Corp.. with assets of $150,000,000, to acquire minority interests in United Gas Improvement Co., Public Service Corp. of New Jersey, and Mohawk Hudson Power Corp.. now held by the organizers of United Corp. and the American Superpower Corp. No merger, this deal was planned to bring the three utility companies into closer relationship, to acquire stock in other power companies operating in the same territory, not to operate, manage or construct power plants.
In view of Bonbright's interest in the great Electric Bond & Share Co. and in Commonwealth Power, Morgan affiliations with the Mellon-Koppers group, it was permissible to predict a thorough integration of the East's power.
Oil. Since 1911. Standard Oil of New Jersey has observed the agreement imposed by the terms of dissolution of the "oil trust" which gave the New England distribution field to Standard of New York. Socony signs predominate on New England gasoline stations. Socony institutional advertisements appear on New England billboards. By the acquisition, last week, of Beacon Oil Co. (Everett, Mass.) Standard of New Jersey entered the forbidden territory, broke a long-standing agreement.
Highly competitive will be the New England territory. Last month Shell Union Oil (U. S. subsidiary of the great Royal Dutch Shell Oil Co.) was permitted by court to buy assets of the bankrupt New England Oil Refining Co. (65 filling stations). To Standard of New Jersey Beacon brings 300 filling stations, an annual distribution of 120,000,000 gallons, a refinery (at Everett) with a daily capacity of 16,000 barrels.
Cosmetics. What is only the first step in the formation of a vast international cosmetics consolidation was effected last week by the merging of two 50-year-old perfumeries. Woodworth Inc. of Manhattan makes powders, perfumes, lipsticks labeled "Fiancee," "Karess," "Viegay." It is publicly financed. Bourjois Inc. of Paris has been privately owned by Pierre Wertheimer, famed owner of Epinard, racetrack phenomenon of 1923-24.
It was Pierre Wertheimer who laid the foundations of Bourjois popularity in the U. S. Seventeen years before he brought Epinard to New York to race Belmont horses, his father sent him, with trunks of samples, to tour the U. S. He drummed