Word: firth
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About five years ago Sir William Firth, handsome kinetic chairman of Richard Thomas & Co., Ltd., ?23,000,000 British steel firm, decided that Britain should have at least one modern continuous strip rolling mill, U. S. type. He got his mill (at Ebbw Vale, South Wales), but in financing it he lost control of Richard Thomas & Co. First his own bank, Lloyds, refused a loan, called in an overdraft, nearly strangled Thomas & Co. with a working-capital shortage. The Bank of England agreed to make the loan, but extracted an issue of prior-rights stock and put some...
Last week it was the turn of Thomas & Co. stockholders to grouse at the Federation-controlled Management. Gathering in the River Plate House in Finsbury Circus, London, they wanted to know why, since Firth was ousted, their once profitable stock had paid no dividend. Chairman the Earl of Dudley did his best to explain. "It's imperative that a strong liquid position should be maintained. . . . Your directors regret that in spite of the substantial increase in profits it has not been possible for a dividend to be paid. ..." He spoke foggily of the dealings between the Steel Control Committee...
...cartel's nose, in spite of the tariff of the Ottawa agreements. So a few years ago ?20,000,000 Richard Thomas & Co., Ltd., the No. 1 British iron, sheet and tin-plate producer, decided to modernize. Its chairman, a forthright, anti-banker industrialist named Sir William John Firth, went to Pittsburgh and hired the experts of United Engineering & Foundry Co. to build him a continuous mill. They signed a contract for a giant (?8,500,000, 650,000 ton) rolling mill to be built in Lincolnshire, where Richard Thomas has steelworks...
...line steel bigwigs, some of Richard Thomas' own competitors. Some of these were induced to resign last summer in favor of a "more representative" board, and the flush business of building Sir John Anderson's air-raid shelters postponed further disagreement until last month. Then Sir William Firth was fired...
Neville Chamberlain refused to discuss the Firth affair. But shortly before his Cabinet fell, one of his most influential critics, London's famed Economist, did. Calling the Richard Thomas board "trustees for the cartel," the Economist asked: "Can a centralized, cartel-like organization of industry, in which the interests of an individual firm are subordinated to those of the industry as a whole, be reconciled with the community's interest in the utmost speed of technical progress?" This question acquired a new urgency last week. For Britain has been importing 200,000 tons of steel a month from...