PERSONAL FILE

sb As the newly elected president of the Japan Chemical Society, Masaharu Doi, 68, speaks for an industry that has increased its production 500% (to $2.9 billion a year) since 1950. But shy, plump Lawyer Doi, an expert on the proper chanting of ancient Japanese ballads, speaks with an even more powerful voice as the de facto chief of the most flourishing of Japan's former zaibatsu (family trusts). Propelled into the presidency of the Sumitomo Chemical Co. in 1947 when Occupation purges eliminated all his seniors, Doi got around U.S. directives to split up the zaibatsu by organizing the White Water Society, a "social club" consisting of the heads of all former Sumitomo enterprises. Today, though the Sumitomo family is no longer in control, the Sumitomo companies again constitute a closely knit combine of more than 115 firms with 1961 sales of $884 million in everything from insurance to aluminum.

sb Britain can lick them all if we want to," boasts Sir Henry Spurrier, 64, ebullient, white-haired chairman and managing director of England's big Leyland Motors group. Sir Henry, third-generation head of a Lancashire company that started with steam wagons and now concentrates on buses and trucks, wants to. Last year, Leyland's bought up (for $51 million) floundering Standard-Triumph International, which makes the Triumph cars. Now, bracing against Britain's possible entry into the Common Market, he has acquired Associated Commercial Vehicles, which specializes in trucks. That makes him Britain's No. i truckmaker. With depots or assembly plants scattered from Holland to Australia, the new company expects to sell $400 million worth of vehicles a year. Says Sir Henry: "We shall be able to fight Mercedes, General Motors, and the other heavy vehicle manufacturers anywhere in the world."

sb Discouraged by $250,000-a-month losses on international routes alone, the Venezuelan government 14 months ago transformed its state-owned LAV airline into VIASA. a new international carrier whose ownership is split 55%-45% between the government and private Venezuelan capital. With a profit of $100,000 so far, VIASA expects to wind up this year firmly in the black. Chiefly responsible is VIASA President Oscar Machado Zuloaga, 42, dynamic, M.I.T.-edu-cated general manager of the Caracas Electrical Co. Machado, who runs the airline on the side for a salary of $8,000 a year, has turned LAV's old losses into profits by cracking down on bribes and padded payrolls and by negotiating a reciprocal jet-leasing agreement under which VIASA jets carry KLM passengers from Caracas to New York and KLM DC-8s handle VIASA traffic between Lima and Europe. J

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