Word: tradings
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Trade News...
Great Expectations. Trade, which once followed the flag, now follows the films. And Rank is, in effect, Britain's chosen instrument to build an industry able to compete with Hollywood in the world market-and so get Britain some of the dollars she desperately needs. He has made an amazing start. In ten years he has changed the British movie industry, once compounded of "concupiscence, chicanery and confusion," into a powerful monopolistic instrument, and fashioned a new economic empire. As powerful as any film enterprise in the world, his empire comprises over 60% of Britain's theaters...
...Friend, the Enemy. As hard a trader as he is a worker, he is ruthless with the tricksters of the trade. If anyone tries to out-trade him for the last penny, Rank usually manages to beat him out of the last ha'penny. And Rank is also ruthlessly fair, yet does not always take kindly to criticism. To a newspaper critic, he once roared: "Don't you know, when you write that kind of thing, that Christ is looking over your shoulder?" Yet Rank bears no rancor for Cinemactor James Mason, who thinks that Rank...
Proposal of Marriage. Rank has still another ace in the hole. If Hollywood should not give him all he feels he is entitled to, the Board of Trade might conceivably cut the quota of U.S. pictures allowed in Britain (now a fat 80% of all pictures shown). At this prospect, Hollywood shudders. The U.S. movie industry last year made $75 million-at least 35% of its income and almost all of its profits-in the British market. Without that market, Hollywood could not afford to spend the millions it does on a single picture. For his part, Rank made only...
...line is long on cash (over $19 million liquid assets) and prestige, short on ships, and uncertain about the future. Before the war it confined itself to the coastal trade (the Hawaiian run was abandoned in 1917). But the war set it to operating War Shipping Administration ships all over the world. Now, with operating costs up 100%, A-H does not see how it can go back to coastal runs at present ICC-fixed rates. It is operating twelve vessels for the Maritime Commission. But this service may stop next July...