Word: bonbright
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...Giantism". Sharpest and most studious of criticisms were voiced in Manhattan where a Round Table Conference on Utility Regulation was being held by almost 100 commission members and regulation students. Finance Professor James Cummings Bonbright of Columbia University, Secretary of the Power Authority of the State of New York, spoke on "The Breakdown of the Public Utility Holding Company." Utilitymen read his speech with keen interest for they knew Professor Bonbright to be a cousin of the late William Prescott Bonbright and of Irving W. Bonbright, co-founders of Bonbright & Co., utility bankers...
...fatal year 1929," said Professor Bonbright, "public utility executives and financiers were able to make a strong case for their assertion that the rapid and remarkable development of the country's electrical industry was due in large measure to the domination of that industry by a group of financially strong and well-managed holding companies. The early history of the light and power enterprise, as exemplified by the growth of United Gas Improvement system and of the Electric Bond & Share system, probably bore out this claim as valid for that period...
While Professor Bonbright conceded that a holding company is essential to consolidate small, competing plants, he averred it has been carried "to a point far beyond that of maximum economy. . . . Normal growth has given away to giantism with a result that a system such as Electric Bond & Share or the Insull System must be regarded as an economic disease." He claimed that geographical "diversification," a prime selling-point for holding company securities, is not rational. He roundly criticized holding companies for borrowing (as many have done) from the companies they control. Heartily in accord with these sentiments was Harvard...
...service charge" Professor Bonbright meant the management or engineering fee which many holding companies extract from the operating companies...
While Wall Street knows that Senator Norbeck will do his best to throttle short sales, that Senator Carter Glass will aid and abet him, it hoped for judicial treatment from Connecticut's Senator Frederic Collin Walcott, onetime vice president in the banking house of Bonbright & Co. A close personal and political friend of the President's, Senator Walcott together with Senator James Couzens persuaded the Committee to investigate bulls as well as bears. "We are not seeking sensational-ism," he said. "And we are going about this in a sane way. There is no intention ... to seek legislation interfering with...