Word: bank
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Some Cushioning. Last week the pound had dropped from its parity of $2.80 to as low as $2.78 5/16, the lowest in seven years and uncomfortably close to its official floor of $2.78, at which the Bank of England is legally obliged to intervene and support the rate by purchasing pounds. Britain's gold and hard currency reserves are at their lowest level since the sterling crisis of 1957, and the respected National Institute of Economic and Social Research has flatly predicted that Britain will show a balance-of-payments deficit for 1964 of $1.4 billion. Whichever party wins...
Despite such troubles, no run on the pound has developed. For one thing, Britain's trade gap has been partly cushioned by a buildup of sterling balances held in London by other sterling area countries. For another, the Bank of England, which has let the sterling rate sag without much intervention, has resources at its call that are formidable enough to discourage currency speculators: $2.5 billion of Britain's own reserves, several hundred million dollars available from Continental banks, a $500 million swap arrangement with the U.S. and $1 billion in stand-by credits from the IMF. Besides...
...Italians are congratulating themselves on a second miracle: the sboom has not turned into a bust. The biggest reason is the strong fiscal medicine administered by the Bank of Italy and its governor, Guide Carli, who is talked of as a future Premier of Italy. Those policies sharply curbed foreign borrowing by Italian banks and thus helped create a deflationary credit squeeze. They also helped produce a drop in industrial production, a threat of unemployment, falling profits and scattered business bankruptcies-but they seem to have saved the economy from collapse...
Britain's moviemaking Rank Organisation-and the entire British movie industry-was in deep trouble in 1948 when Managing Director John Davis received a letter from a bank to which Rank owed a cool $45 million. Written by the bank's chairman, the letter was accompanied by a copy of Rank's annual report-with a circle scrawled around the picture of a statuesque Rank starlet. Said the notation: "If worst comes to worst, we'll settle for this...
Though amused, Davis had other ideas for solving the crisis. "Some may treat change as an enemy," he says, "but I prefer to believe it to be an ally." Steadily moving Rank beyond motion pictures, he diversified it into everything from testing machines to tenpin bowling, chopped down the bank debt within four years. Such change has proved a powerful ally indeed for Rank and Davis. This week Rank reports record fiscal 1964 earnings of $13 million on sales of $250 million, up 50% over 1963 and 13 times those of pre-diversification days...