MESMERISED BY STINNES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3131, 21 August 1922, Page 2

MESMERISED BY STINNES.

The name of Hugo Stinnes, the German financier, has figured prominently in connection with the reconstruction of several Scandinavian industrial concerns made necessary by the effects of the war. It has, however, been a puzzle to those versed in financial affairs how Horr Stinnes, in view of the rapidly declining, value of the mark, managed to obtain the enormous amounts of cash required to control concerns located in countries with the sound currencies of the Scandinavian kingdoms. The failure of one of those Stimieseontrollcd concerns—a shipbuilding yard in a Swedish provincial town —may provide the key to the puzzle. I have had the opportunity of going through the accounts of the shipbuilding yard in (|iiestion, and have found no trace of Stinnes' money. Herr Stinnes apparently did not own a cingle share in tlie concern, in spile of the fact that ho was the controller of its destiny. How. then, did he aeriuire control ? Ii seems that the personality of this wizard of German industry mesmerised even Scandinavian bankers and business men. On no other security than bis promise, on certain conditions, to have a number of ships for the German merchant marine built on the stocks of this yard one of the leading bankers in Copenhagen advanced many millions of kroner (a krone is worth about Is) to the shipbuilding yard. The ships were never built—the Stinnes conditions could not be fulfilled without involving enormous Josses—and the concern had to go into liquidation. The loss of many million kroner to the Copenhagen bank in question was one of the reasons why it had to be reconstructed.