Market notes
CUSTOS
The Government broker's announcement last week that he would buy steel shares in their ex dividend form brought consternation to the speculators who had sold gilt-edged stocks hoping to buy them back more cheaply in their steel share form. On Monday the price at which the Government broker elected to do business was i discount. An enormous turn- over followed and it was said that the Govern- ment had to take up to f80 million of stock. Other buyers took about f20 million. Meanwhile the speculators had to rush back into the gilt-edged market to buy back the stock of which they were short. After a rise of to l on this buying, the gilt-edged market became flat on sterling's weakness.
The rules for takeovers will have to be tightened up. The Stock Exchange has never published its own rules but has assumed that those drawn up by the issue houses would be acceptable. This proved not to be the case in the savage battle between Aberdare Holdings and Thorn Electrical for the control of Metal Industries. Last week Aberdare claimed 533 per cent control through purchases in the market, but Thorn Electrical countered this by selling its subsidiary, Glover and Main, to Metal Industries for 4.72 million shares, which gave Thorn 384 per cent of the enlarged Metal Industries equity against 323 per cent for Aber- dare. The Stock Exchange Council cannot like the watering of an equity without prior consent from the shareholders, but it has not refused a quotation to the additional Mt shares created in the interests of Thorn Electrical Industrial shares generally declined on the gloomy economic comments of the weekend press but gold shares revived, perhaps on the prospect that the Group of Ten would find a compromise solution to the problem of inter- meeting in London. national monetary reform now that they were
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