THE STINNES CRASH.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 246, 17 October 1925, Page 16

THE STINNES CRASH.

FAMILY REDUCED TO POVERTY GRIM FAIRY TALE OF COMMERCE. The greatest fairy tale of modern times, unsurpassed by any story of a young man who dreamed of a castle and awoke in a hovel, emerges in the latest guarded statements of the German bankers to the effect that, providing things go well, the Stiinies family wifi receive a few shares in the original coal business which Hugh Stinnes set up for himself as an enterprising youth and which will be all that is left'out of the huge mushroom growth born of inflation when the present proceedings are ended. Those great possessions of mines, works, shipping lines, factories, newspapers, hotels with ramifications extending to most unlikely branches of commerce and industry, are now being wound up by Germany's four great "D" banks— (so-called because of their same initial letter i, the Dresdner, Deutsche. Darmstadtcr and Disconto, which have taken the place of the twenty-two banks originally called in to avert a German economic catastrophe. With debts computed at 120 millions, with a further eight millions where the name of Stinnes stood as security, the capital is assessed at 1411 millions at the present moment alter SO millions have been already liquidated —so that actually there should be something saved out of the wreck to carry on with. But not only are vast sums being paid out in inlere.-t. but much is needed to keep what is not yet sold afloat, -o thai the banks, instead of reckoning on getting their lent money ha<k again, ale now forming new companion from i Inold onc< and taking shares in them. Their action is regarded as very unwise from a technical banking standpoint, and stands out more ami more as a deed done m a handsome spirit to keep the goo/1 name of Germany clear in the eve's of those abroad from whom she expects confidence if future credits are to be given. It is known in Berlin thai the name of Stinnes is as much a symbol of the new regime as ffohenzollerii was ot" the old, and that Stinnes' own family should be plunged into what is likely to be more than comparative poverty ends a remarkable period of post-war'historv.