Company Notes
rTTHIS is the 150th anniversary of Herrburger Brooks Limited, and the chairman, Mr. C. W. P. Hughes, is able to recommend—and jus- tifiably—a dividend of 15 per cent. The company has been well to the fore in exhibiting at the 27th National Radio and Television Exhibition, also in the piano section at the Frankfurt Spring Fair. It has a high standing in regard to its `Schwander actions, and over a long period has established a reputation in the trade. It is therefore good to knew from the chairman that the prospects for the current year show a notice- able improvement as compared with the sales for the same period last year. The net profit after tax was £19,744; the large sum of £111,955 is being carried forward. This is a company which is subject to fluctuating demands, but even so, the 10s. ordinary shares at 12s. 6d. yield 12 per cent.
Municipal and General Securities held a meet- ing of their investors in Birmingham last month, which was of special interest to unit holders of the Midland and Industrial General Trust, Fund. Mr. Maurice Macmillan, MP, chairman of the Wider Share Ownership Committee, the principal speaker, emphasised the need to encour- age capital investment in the United King- dom and thought that part of the solution was to raise the level of savings by the small saver. This can surely be done without diverting investment from National Savings. Unit trusts are an obvious way of obtaining the necessary spread of risk by investing in industry, without having your small eggs in one basket. The regular investor (saver) can derive a high degree of security with a good chance of both capital appreciation and increasing income by putting aside, say, £1 per week into a unit trust, as for example in such as the M. & G. Thrift Plan. This group has produced an interesting chart which shows that over a period from 1936 to 1960, savings invested at £25 half-yearly with M. & G. would have multiplied by nearly four times as compared with a like amount invested at 24 per cent. in the Post Office Savings Bank.
Save-and-Prosper Group have just launched an offer of 1,000,000 Scotshares at 5s. each. This is an appropriate occasion as November 30 is St. Andrew's Day. The chairman, Lord Polwarth, pointed out that in the present state of the markets it might be possible that these units would be offered at a price below the advertised price of 5s. Scotland is on the threshold of in- dustrial growth and many big companies are building factories and will, of course, employ
a large labour force. Scotshares provide a men" )5 I for the long-term investor to take an interest n the development of Scotland and at the offered price the units yield £4 Os. 8d. per cent.
Woolwich Equitable Building Society have published their accounts in respect of their 11301 Annual Statement for the year ended Septeo ber 30, 1960. It is significant that neatly £6,500,000 was advanced under the government house purchasing scheme, allowing no fewer than 4,930 persons to become owners of houses bat before 1919. During the year more than 19,0 advances were made on new mortgages, and thI5 added up to the sum of nearly £34,000,000, att increase of 26 per cent, on last year's record total. This is a society that has at all times met the demands for mortgages which today are I'' creasing and which many other societies are tin' able to satisfy. Total assets increased during the year by some £22,000,000 and now total over £178,000,000.
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