Word: ponte
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Twice Told Tale. The U.S. had promised that the case would be a "never-before-revealed biography of the Du Fonts." Actually, as told by Defendants Pierre and Irénée and Du Pont officials, it was pretty much a retelling of familiar history...
...Fonts denied the Government's charge that their purchase of $25 million worth of G.M. stock in 1917 was part of a plan to make G.M. a captive closed market for Du Pont products. The purchase was made largely because the late John J. Raskob, the treasurer of Du Pont, had recommended that Du Pont waste no time getting into the young auto business. Raskob's recommendation had also stated: "Our interest in [G.M.] will undoubtedly secure for us the entire Fabrikoid [artificial leather], pyralin [celluloid], paint and varnish business . . ." But Pierre du Pont declared: "There...
...assistant, G.M. was put back on its feet, its assets boosted from $605 million to $1.8 billion. But Pierre had not been able to get the exclusive use of Du Font's revolutionary new auto paint, Duco, for G.M. Irénée, then president of Du Pont, insisted on selling it to all comers. At no time, then or since, have Du Pont sales to G.M. exceeded 4.1% of its total annual sales...
Lucky Coincidence. Equally sound business reasons, the defense insisted, prompted the Du Pont investment in U.S. Rubber. In 1927, the company was in bad shape (quipped Irénée: "Too many months of accounts receivable"), but Irénée believed that new management could put it in the black. It was a "coincidence," said he, that the syndicate that purchased U.S. Rubber stock in 1927 was made up of members of the Du Pont family. The reason was that Irénée's brother-in-law, W. W. Laird, was the Wilmington broker...
...Font's interest in tetraethyl, Alfred Sloan testified that it was G.M.'s Charles F. Kettering who suggested that rather than build a plant for making an antiknock component itself, G.M. should go into business with Du Pont, because "they were the best chemists in the country." From the 43 defense witnesses and two Government witnesses, onetime U.S. Rubber President F. B. Davis and Lawrence Fisher (Fisher Body), the Government was able to draw little evidence that a conspiracy to create or capitalize on "captive markets" had ever existed. At one point, U.S. Rubber President H. E. Humphreys...