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INVESTMENT COMPANY'S STRONG POSITION Investment Trusts have not failed to feel the effects of last year's fall in security values and industrial recession. The Alliance Trust can consider itself among the most fortunate for it has been able again to distribute dividends amounting to 25 per cent, for the year ended January 31st, and to retain a substantial part of its earnings. Actual earnings were equal to over 37 per cent, on the capital, as against 384- per cent. in the previous year. Moreover, as Mr. James Prain ex- plained at the meeting last week, the fall in revenue is largely explained by the fact that the previous year's figures contained a sum of over £21,000 in settlement of accumulated arrears of dividends. There is no longer an important figure to be received under that heading.
Mr. Prain's tentative forecast for this year is that there will be no severe falling off in the trust's income from invest- ments in this country. He thinks that Government expenditure will prevent political uncertainties from inducing a slump. He thinks, moreover, that the position in the U.S.A. has changed greatly for the better during the past year. But he emphasised the provisional character of his estimates. Like other leading business men, he feels that the present position will not be allowed to persist, and that it will be resolved either by passing on to a war-economy or on to one based on disarmament. Either alternative discourages facile optimism.
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