NEW CAPITAL ACTIVITY.
In considering the somewhat slacker conditions of business In the Stock Markets, allowance has also to be made for the continued activity in the matter of capital creations. Up to a point, of course, there is a sense in which activity stimulates activity, and it is no infrequent experience to find that even during a period of new loan and new capital creations, existing stocks are also tending upwards. Nevertheless, a moment usually arrives when the demands for new capital become so important that as the dates for the instalments approach some weakening of existing securities is shown, as a result of realizations on the part of those who have to take up new securities. The Greek Loan offered by Hambros Bank, Ltd., and Messrs. Erlangers was a huge success and must have been about six times covered. During the past week a feature has been the issue of quite a number of Home industrial shares, and the response has been a good one. In the case, for example, of the offer for sale of 3,400,000 Ordinary Shares of 5s. each in the International Tea Company's Stores, the issue seems to have been quickly and greatly oversubscribed, even though offered at the high price of 25s. a share. Similarly, in the case of Debenhams Securities Limited, to which a reference was made in these columns last week, the offer of £2,000,000 in 7i per cent. -Cumulative Preference Shares, which was made on Wednesday, was well responded to. Without in any way suggesting that the shares of either of these companies, or of any other particular concern recently offering new capital, are to be specially selected as profitable investments, there is little doubt that the observations made recently by Mr. J. M. Keynes, at the annual meeting of the National Mutual Life Assurance Society, concerning the place to be filled by even Ordinary Stocks of industrial undertakings in the category of investments as distinct from speculations, have created a considerable amount of interest.
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