For a $13,000,000 company which accounts for less than 1% of the total U. S. automobile business, Hupp Motor Car Corp. makes an astonishing amount of financial news. For several years most of the news concerned the strenuous efforts of Archie Moulton Andrews, Hupp's biggest stockholder, to oust the old management. By last autumn Mr. Andrews was safely intrenched in the Hupp offices as board chairman, but peace failed to follow. Just as strenuous efforts were promptly launched to oust Mr. Andrews. And by last week the shrewd, breezy archpromoter, who does most of his work in a labyrinth of lawsuits, was up to his ears in trouble.
One of Promoter Andrews' troubles was with the New York Stock Exchange, his old and favorite enemy. Back in 1932 when Mr. Andrews was booming the sale of securities in packages of one share each in 25 or 50 corporations, the Stock Exchange forbade its members to execute orders for the Andrews selling concern. By the time an injunction was obtained the cream was off the packaged securities business, and the Andrews company still has a $21,000,000 damage suit pending against the Stock Exchange's 40 august governors.
For the past few months the Exchange has been trying to put Mr. Andrews on the carpet for certain options, contracts and other internal Hupp affairs. Finally it sent Mr. Andrews and his fellow officials an ominous invitation to appear "in the north end of the governing committee room'' in the Stock Exchange Building to explain some of the goings-on that the Exchange considers "unconscionable." Having a number of other worries and no desire to appear before a body which does not permit "defendants" benefit of counsel, Mr. Andrews regretted the invitation.' Last week the Exchange announced that it would apply to the Securities & Exchange Commission in Washington for permission to strike Hupp stock from the list.
Meantime one of Hupp's founders and a former chairman, J. (for John) Walter Drake, marched into court as a large stockholder, demanding that Chairman Andrews be unceremoniously ousted by judicial order. Mr. Drake, who served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce when Herbert Hoover headed that Department, also obtained a temporary injunction restraining the Hupp directors from carrying out the same contracts & options that bothered the Stock Exchange. His charges were that the contracts & options were drawn largely for Archie Moulton Andrews' personal benefit.
Mr. Andrews denied the Drake charges, calling the whole thing a case of spite work instigated by discharged employes and disgruntled dealers. And he cracked back at a group of Chicago distributors with an injunction restraining their anti-Andrews activities. In Detroit, in a lightning move, he dismissed all office employes, "executive and otherwise," by the simple method of bolting the Hupp doors one morning last week before the employes turned up for work.
"A Hitler purge without the firing squad became necessary," Mr. Andrews' assistant explained. "Secrets of the company were being divulged to the opposition and to the New York Stock Exchange."