BROKEN UP.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 21 July 1925, Page 5

BROKEN UP.

HUGE STINNES TRUST. TOO COMPLICATED. BY CABLE —PRESS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT LONDON, July 20. The Berlin correspondent of the Daily Chronicle states that when Herr Stinnes died he controlled 1388 concerns, but the vast trust has now been pulled down in a few days by Frau Stinnes, his widow. With iron nerve and determination she has laid low the Tower of Babel her husband erected, selling desperately in order to rescue a little from the wreck. Her two sons proved quite incapable of carrying on their father’s business. Under Frau Stinnes’ orders hundreds of concerns, big and little, have Deen sold at bargain prices, including 8,000,000 marks worth of shares in the Berlin Handelsgesellsschaft, which had been of immense value when the trust required credit. These shares had become worth 13,000,000, but Frau Stinnes sold them for 10,000,000. The bank, therefore, has shaken off an undesirable Stinnes interest and made a profit of 3,000,000 marks. The Rhine-land-Westphalian electricity works, of which Herr Stinnes was specially proud, were sold to a rival firm called United Industries. Undertakings were sold at a bankrupt stock price, though the nominal capital was valued at £6.000,000. Stinnes’ company' for trading in the East will be closed down, as will the Russian trading department. Stinnes’ shipping lines will he sold to American and German concerns. The palatial offices of the Deutsche Allgemaine Zeitung were sold at an amazingly low figure. The Prussian Government bought large portions of the trust’s landed estates.

Practically the whole trust, except a few iron and coal interests, has been broken up. Tt was too complicated for anyone to control except a master mind.