ALL GONE

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12195, 21 July 1925, Page 6

ALL GONE

GREAT STINNES TRUST WIDOW SACRIFICES MILLIONS TOO COMPLEX TO CONTROL . By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Rceived July 20, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON. July 20. The “Daily Chronicle” correspondent in Berlin states that when Hugo Stinnes died he controlled 1388 con. cerns. The vast trust has now been pulled down in/ a few days by Frau Stinnes, his widow, who, with iron nerve and determination has laid low the Tower of Babel her husband erected, and is selling desperately in order to rescue a little from the wreck. The two sons proved quite incapable of carrying on the father’s business, and under Frau Stiunes’s orders hundreds of concerns, big and little, have been 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 million marks, but Frau Stinnes sold for 10 millions. The bank

therefore Has shaken off the undesirable Stinnes interest, and made a profit of three million marks. The Rhineland and Westphalian electricity works, of which Hugo Stinnes was specially proud, were sold to a rival firm, called the United Industries Undertakings, at bankrupt stock price, though nominal capital was valued at £6.000.000. The Stinnes Company' for Trading in the East will be closed down, as will the Russian trading department! The Stinnes shipping lines will be sold to American and German concerns. The palatial offices of the “Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” were sold at cn 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 lean broken up. It was too complicated (or anyone to control, except .the master mind.