Word: dividend
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...rather unusual for a company to declare a $55-per-share dividend. When the payout is voted by a board filled with newcomers from another company that has just acquired control, eyebrows go up all around. Last week they were raised when Manhattan-based Great American Insurance Co. decided to dip into its $300 million surplus to distribute a total of about $171 million in securities. Reason: National General Corp., a Los Angeles-based moviemaker and would-be conglomerate, recently picked up 75% control of Great American Holding Corp., the fire and casualty insurance firm's parent holding company...
...National General, voting itself the fat dividend looked like a smart move. The company waged a bitter proxy fight to get its 75%, and has offered to buy the remaining 25% at $45 per share. Before the offer was made, the stock had been selling for about half that amount. Great American certainly looked ripe for plucking. It had been losing money on insurance for at least a decade, mainly because it concentrated on personal fire and casualty policies, a competitive area plagued by rising losses. Like many other hard-pressed insurance concerns, Great American concentrated on making profits...
Klein obviously has in mind using at least part of his dividend to finance some new mergers and acquisitions. Even with its surplus cut in half, Great American has more than the industrywide average of loss reserves in relation to its underwriting volume. "We did no milking," Klein insists. "We are staying in the insurance business. We paid about $500 million for the company, so obviously we aren't going to hurt ourselves. What many businessmen fail to keep in mind is that the proper utilization of capital is the cornerstone of U.S. industry." That, of course...
...rivals fired public-relations broadsides at each other, Vogüé dropped Saint-Gobain's traditional secrecy about company finances and prospects and wooed its long-ignored and meagerly rewarded stockholders with good news. He promised a 25% stock dividend and predicted that profits would double by 1971 to $50 million. His unprecedented Sunday open house drew tens of thousands of fascinated Frenchmen to S-G plants all over France...
...take care of all those who, like Oliver Twist, ask for more. In the next 18 months, the probable area of savings-about $2 billion-is not enough to take care of the demands of the cities, of education and of welfare that could easily absorb the anticipated dividend from the end of the Viet Nam war. But to raise taxes in the interim might well impede the growth of the economy, on which the maintenance of prosperity depends, and with it the hope of improving American society. The President probably cannot lower military expenditures to the pre-Viet...