Dollars for Dollar

In the crowded, oak-paneled boardroom of Washington's Riggs National Bank last week, the long ownership battle over the American President Lines, Ltd. finally came to an end. On a bid of $18.4 million, the line, with its 17 passenger and freight ships, went to A.P.L. Associates. Inc., a company formed by California Oilman Ralph K. (for Kenneth) Davies.

For seven years, Stanley Dollar had fought to regain the line founded by his father and turned over to the Government before the war in exchange for a $7,500,000 loan. Last week, as one final gesture to make sure the Government couldn't keep his old property, Dollar put in a minimum bid of $14 million. "We are gone," he murmured sadly as he heard A.P.L. Associates' high bid. But Dollar was by no means dollarless. Under the terms of the sale, arranged last spring with Commerce Secretary Charles Sawyer (TIME, June 23), Dollar will get half the proceeds, or more than $9,000,000.

First Thoughts. Oilman Davies first became interested in American President in 1945, when he was leaving his wartime job as deputy petroleum administrator in Washington. Davies' old post as $57,500-a-year senior vice president of Standard Oil of California was no longer available. Looking around for other possibilities, he spotted American President, which the Government wanted to sell. When a bid for $8,500,000 was rejected as too low, Davies began buying up stock, accumulated 25% of the line's publicly held shares, and was made a director.

As Stanley Dollar fought through the courts to get back his family company, Davies bided his time. With ten oil companies, he formed American Independent Oil Co. (TIME, July 19, 1948). With State Department aid, he won an oil concession in the neutral zone of Kuwait and poured $10 million into mapping and surveying the area (he hopes to sink new test wells next month). He set up a Mexican subsidiary with Oilman Samuel B. Mosher, president of Signal Oil & Gas Co., and spent another $3,000,000 getting it into production (present output: 5,000 barrels a day). Then he got Mosher on American President Lines' board, and formed A.P.L. Associates to buy the line. Mosher's company put up half the purchase price; Davies and other friends put up most of the rest.

Good Mixture. As American President's new skipper, Davies plans no radical change of course. He will keep the line's President George Killion, under whom the company turned a profit of $3,200,000 last year. But Davies thinks American President has a still brighter future, hopes to mix his oil and water businesses together. His oil company has six tankers, now chartered out to other companies, which American President may well take over. If & when his Middle East oil concession starts producing, it will have a potential customer in American President, which uses 15,000 barrels of oil a day to fuel its ships.

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