Word: eca
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ECA, which had ruled out private traders as buyers and shippers of grain for Europe (TIME, Nov. 29), took another detour around middlemen last week. From now on, it will bypass many commercial bankers, who have been the agents for the distribution of over $1 billion in ECA funds...
Heretofore, the agents received letters of commitment from ECA and issued letters of credit to ECA countries. Under an optional plan ECA will set up accounts in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on which ECA countries may draw, roughly like writing a check. The ECA countries will not be required to sever long-standing relationships with private agents. But for the first time in history, foreign governments, if they want to, will be able to draw on the U.S. Government direct...
...result, ECA nations will be able to save sizable sums which commercial banks had been collecting as service fees and interest charges. On the banking side, the big losers will be New York's Chase National Bank, Bankers Trust Co. and J. P. Morgan & Co., Inc., which have handled $439 million of the funds...
Bankers and foreign traders squawked, arguing that the plan was simply another step in a campaign to eliminate all private interests from ECA business. But ECA took the position that European aid was for Europeans and not for the bankers-and as much of it as possible should therefore go to Europe...
...path of two-way trade with Europe, which ECA hopes to smooth, was still rocky. When Cleveland's Municipal Light Plant opened bids last week for two new turbogenerators, Switzerland's Brown Boveri & Co., Ltd. was low by $500,000, Nevertheless, some city officials wanted to give the contract to a U.S. firm; they said they felt that replacement parts might be hard to get in event of war. Brown Boveri promptly pointed out that it could retaliate: it had bought more than $2,000,000 worth of U.S. equipment in the last ten months-more than...