YANKEE DOLLARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 40, 16 February 1929, Page 9

YANKEE DOLLARS.

HUGE DEAL REPORTED

Purchase Of Seven British

Power Companies.

TO RUN PUBLIC UTILITIES. (United Service.) (Received 11 a.m.) NEW YOPvK, February 15. Mr. Charley Clarke, president of an American company named Utilities Power and Light Company, has announced the purchase of seven large British power companies with assets of .£30.000,000.

Mr. Clarke used the trans-Atlantic telephone for most of his negotiations to huy the entire eominon stock of the Greater London and Counties Trust, Limited. which controls these seven companies. This is the first time an American company has taken over British public utilities for serving localities in the British Isles. The Earl of Birkenhead has been named as chairman of the Greater London and Counties Trust. The seven companies will serve 05 cities and towns in England and Scotland with light and power.

THE OTHER SIDE.

Entirely British Control, Only American Money. BIRKENHEAD CHAIRMAN. (Australian Press Assn. —United Service.) (Received 11 a.m.) LONDON, February 15. A message from New York reports the Earl of Birkenhead's connection with an Anglo-American electricity deal through his acceptance of the chairmanship of the Greater London and Counties Trust, Limited, which controls, seven leading power companies.

Commenting yesterday upon this news, Lord Birkenhead said it was clear that industrial prosperity bore a deli nito relation to the cost of electrical energy. He proposed to make a complete analysis of the Acts of Parliament pertaining to the electrical industry with a view to simplifying th» conditions relating to the supply of energy on uniform standard ' linethroughout the country.

The organisation with which he had now associated himself was British, said Lord Birkenhead, although it \vn, associated with interests in America through the Utility Power and Light Corporation.

"People are wrong when they *ay that American money means America - !, control, - ' says Mr. Mas*ingberd Hoger*-. deputy chairman of the Greater London Counties Trust, Limited. -Lord Birkenhead will be the supreme head of an all-British concern under an entirely British control and working entirely for Britain's advantage.

'We are getting American money because we need a lot to develop the scheme for the electrification of the whole country through CO eompanic* probably necessitating £10.000.000, but we are ready to accept finance from Britain or anywhere else."

Mr. Ropers has decided not to reveal Lord Birkenhead's salarv. adding that it i* nothing like the huge (inure some imagine. Indeed he had refused two otters, one of .".() per cent and one of 40 per cent greater.