Wall Street Picnic

The easy air of an old-fashioned family reunion surrounded the 58th floor of a Wall Street skyscraper last week. There, stockholders of Atlas Corp., at the first annual meeting ever held in Manhattan,/- ate ham sandwiches from a nearby buffet.

Chairman Floyd Odium waved gaily at familiar faces. Everybody relaxed under Odium's charm and talked of the Big Deal, Atlas' purported merger with Kaiser-Frazer, which had kept Wall Street and Los Angeles abuzz for three months. Now they expected to hear all about it from the master financier.

But the more Odium told them, the less they were sure they understood. It was true, he said, that such a merger had been discussed, and it was true that Atlas, an investment company which examines all responsible propositions, had looked into it thoroughly. In fact, Odium had two sets of independent experts check it for both Consolidated Vultee, which he controls, and for Atlas. The experts, he added, had brought in their reports, but the directors of both companies had not yet seen them.

At first glance, said Odium, the proposed deal had looked attractive. There were reasons why it should: Convair could use K-F's big Willow Run plant to make aircraft; in peacetime, it could make automobiles; moreover, Kaiser-Frazer had piled up some $49 million in losses which the merged companies could use as an offset against Convair's excess-profits taxes.

But the obstacles were tremendous. The deal would have to be approved by the RFC (which holds the collateral on some $52.8 million in loans to K-F), the Treasury for its tax features, the SEC for any merging of securities, the Defense Department for air contracts, and the Justice Department for possible anti-trust angles. "As of today," concluded Odium, "no conclusion has as yet been reached." But one stockholder, pointing out that mere rumors of the merger had made Atlas stock rise several points some weeks ago, cried: "Let's have more romance like this!"

/- Stockholder Lewis Gilbert, a ubiquitous heck ler at meetings of large corporations, had com plained that the previous meetings, in Wilmington, Del., were hard to get to.

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