Border Raid

Wall Street has seldom seen a nimbler broken-field runner than 47-year-old Charles Allen Jr. A New York City boy who quit school at 15 to be a Stock Exchange messenger, Allen learned the Street's ways so well that he parlayed his pocket change into $15 million. With his younger brothers Herbert and Harold, he built the potent investment banking firm of Allen & Co. (TIME, Aug. 2,1948). They bought up and reorganized the Rockefellers' famed Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp., Germany's war-forfeited American Bosch Corp., captured many another plum with their sharp-eyed knack for spotting "special situations."

Last spring the Aliens quietly began buying up the stock of Montreal's staid, solid old Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada, which had only 20,000 shares outstanding. The stock, then selling for about $780 a share, was paying $20 a share in dividends. What made the stock look special was the fact that prosperous Sun Life, with $77.8 million in surplus funds, could legally pay four times as much in dividends. If the Aliens could gain control, they could not only quadruple their dividends under the law, but enhance the value of their stock in the bargain. As the Aliens fed out $1,000,000-plus to buy 1,400 shares in piecemeal blocks, the price climbed as high as $1,600 a share.

Three weeks ago something akin t panic spread through Sun Life's Montreal citadel ("Largest office building in th British Empire"). Montreal's financial district in St. James Street buzzed with rumors that the Aliens and allied U.S speculators had gobbled up 35% of Sun Life's stock. Out to Sun Life's Canadian stockholders went frantic telephone pleas from company officers not to sell, to "keep this fine old Canadian company Canadian." At the Dominion Insurance Office's behest, Canadian Finance Minister Douglas Abbott took one step to repel the invaders. He announced last fortnight that he would sponsor a bill to "freeze" Canadian insurance companies' dividend-payment policies.

Last week Sun Life delivered its own counterblow. To make its stock harder to grab, the officers split the shares 10-for-1. Said a company spokesman: "I think we've stopped the raid." But it already looked as if the Aliens might cash in on their latest "special situation." To keep the loyalty of its other stockholders, jittery Sun Life last week hinted that the $2 dividend rate on the split stock would soon be boosted to $3 a share. If so, Stockholder Allen would get the raise, along with the rest.

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