ROCKET RISE AND FALL OF A MILLIONAIRE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3137, 2 October 1922, Page 7

ROCKET RISE AND FALL OF A MILLIONAIRE.

The American financial world is amazed at the magnitude of the failure of Allan A. Ryan, eon of Thomas Fortune Ryan, the multi-millionaire copper operator. While the young financier's plea in the involuntary bankruptcy lists gives the liabilities of his brokerage- firm as 132,-135,477 dollars (nominally £6,500,000). of which 27,806,984 dollars is given as covered by collateral securities held by banks, 'his actual cash assets are put down as only 16 dollars 1 , or say. normallyj about 655, and per--Tsonaii effects at about £3O. Even 40s owing to a toy shop is included among his liabilities. Property, insurance, motor cars, virtually everything he possesised 1 , has been sacrificed in the war he has waged with the New York Stock Exchange, which in June, 1920, refused to accept his resignation and expelled him. This conflict arose over a corner he effected in stock of the Stutz Motor Corporation, which he controlled, and by which 1 corner he cleared anything from a million to 1,600,000 dollars. He caught traders big and little short of stock, and ran the price up from 150 to 1,000 dollars a share. When asked for leniency he instead published' a list of Stock Exchange embers who, he said, were among the shorts. A settlement was finally effected at 550 dollars ai share. From that day hrs financial doom was sealed. His Stutz exploit was the culmination of six years of frenzied speculation, in which, starting with relatively small capital, he promoted a dozen big companies of one kind and another. At one time he operated in as many as three pools simultaneously, until in tht> autumn of 1919 he admitted that his private fortune, including stocks, bonds, and cash in banks, amounted to 30,000,000 dollars (nominally £6,000,000). In the course of his meteoric career he had many clashes with Stock Exchange authorities, but the Stutz "corner" was the last straw, and apparently his famous father refused to stretch forth a hand to save him. Mr Allan Ryan, in his fight over the Stutz business, characterised the New York Stock Exchange as "an irresponsible club and clique," and he called for its conversion into "a fiduciary public institution, subject to supervision, as banks are, so that the investing public may be properly protected." The controversy at its height raged! round the intricate question of "shorts." Dealings in Stutz shares were prohibited after they had risen from 100 dollars (nominally £2O) to 391; and then that Mr Ryan defied the Stock Exchange! governors, contending that some favored suspension of trading because they had sold shares they did not own, and on a cornered market could not buy in for delivery. Indeed, he invited the governors to sell his scat on the Exchange, even though it brought only £IO.OOO or less, although the ruling value was put at upwards of £20,000. His attitude was tnat it hurt his self-respect to continue identified with a body who, he complained, had countenanced an attempt by some members to repudiate their contracts. The Stock Exchange governors confended that Mr Ryan owned practically all the Stutz stock, so that it was impossible for those who sold short to fulfil their obligations, and this justified the decision to withdraw the stock from the Exchange. Mr Thomas Fortune Rvan, the father of Mr Allan Ryan, has been described in Wall street as a great financial power, Virginian to the core, but of Scots-Irish descent. He started' life as clerk in a Baltimore dry goods store; at 23 was member of a wall street brokers' firm; three years later on the Stock Exchange; and at 35 the righthand man of the late William C. Whitney in traction development in NewYork City. Long before Whitney's death he was the big man in the vast corporation they and their associates had built up. He t-oon became a notable force in political affairs. It is on. record that once Whitney and Ryan were pressed hard by enemies in Wall Street, and when at a moment of crisis two millions of money were needed, Ryan produced it and saved! the dayhe borrowed it from a bank through/ his office boy. y\r Ryan has been described as the most daring plunger in New York—not so much a speculator in shares as manipulator of corporations.