BUILDING TRADE OUTLOOK.
Shareholders of London Brick Company have for several years regularly received three interim dividends of 5 per cent., followed by a final dividend of 5 per cent. This year the Chairman, Sir P. Malcolm Stewart, explained that he hoped to maintain the interim dividends, but would feel happier if stockholders would regard the final 5 per cent. as a matter of hopeful expectation rather than of certainty. He described his attitude as being one of candid caution, not of pessimism, and explained that circumstances did not nuke it possible for him to give quite so confident a forecast as in the past. In particular he confirmed the fact that house-building in London and the Sout't- is slowly falling off. So far the London Brick Company has been able to offset that decline, partly by extend- ing its area, so as to participate in the increased building operations in the Midlands and the North, partly because building operations in the London area of the larger type have tended to offset the decline in house-building.
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