Oil Merger

Associated Oil and Tide Water Oil locked east and west coast oil production, transportation, refining and marketing into a tight $240,000,000 merger last week. The new company will be named the Tide Water Associated Oil Co.

Three weeks ago Blair & Co., Inc., and Chase Securities Corp. anticipated this merger by buying 300,000 shares (55%) of Associated Oil. They offered sellers $145,000,000 in cash or $165,000,000 in exchange securities (TIME, Feb. 15). Now to Tide Water shareholders they offer one and one-third shares of the new common for one share of the old. Preferred shares will exchange evenly.

Associated Oil ranks next to Standard Oil on the Pacific Coast. Tide Water Oil is formidable along the Atlantic, has large workings in the mid-continent field. Together they have the corporate right "to engage in the petroleum business generally, including the power to acquire securities of other companies." The bankers will give no intimations of what concerns may be taken in.

The President of the new company will be Axtell J. Byles; directors: Henry W. de Forest of Manhattan, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Southern Pacific Co.; W. F. Humphrey of San Francisco, Director of Associated Oil Co.; Paul Shoup of San Francisco, President of Associated Oil Co.; Robert McKelvy of Manhattan, Vice President of Tide Water Oil Co.; Axtell J. Byles, President of Tide Water Oil Co.; E. L. Shea, Vice President of Tide Water Oil Co., and George White of Marietta, Ohio.

This is the second recent large oil deal. Early in February, Standard Oil of California reformed into a billion-and-a-half-dollar corporation in preparation for the absorption of other oil firms (TIME, Feb. 8).