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Hastily summoned to Nassau last week, Gramco's directors assembled in marathon meetings, occasionally sending out for hamburgers and Chivas Regal. Meantime, employees at Gramco's mock colonial headquarters fended off a flood of transocean phone calls from anxious shareholders in many far-off countries. Emerging from one meeting, Vice President Joseph Jordan delivered a pep talk to worried USIF salesmen. "We are solvent," he said. "If we have to, we'll clear the deck—tighten our belts, cut officers' salaries, drop employees. I get nothing. The shareholders will get paid." That, of course, remains to be seen. Gramco places such generous valuations on its properties that some U.S. real estate men doubt that they could be sold now—except at a loss.
* For United States Investment Fund.