HUGE IRON MERGER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 357, 18 May 1928, Page 12

HUGE IRON MERGER

INDUSTRY IN AUSTRALIA NOMINAL CAPITAL OF £5,000,000 (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) SYDNEY, Friday. A huge merger of iron and steel firms has been completed. The businesses concerned are Hoskins’s Iron and Steel Company, of Lithgow, Port Kembla and other parts of Australia; the Australian business of Dorman, Long and Company, Limited (with the exception of the Sydney Harbour Bridge contract) ; Baldwins, Limited; and Howard Smith, Limited. The new company will be known as Australian Iron and Steel, Limited. It will have a nominal capital of £5,000,000. An announcement was made by the Minister of Trade and Customs early in March that Dorman, Loi*g and Company, and Baldwins, Limited, of England, two of the largest iron and steel manufac-. turers in the Empire, and Howard Smith, Limited, of Melbourne, had decided to join with Hoskins's Iron and Steel Company to establish and develop an iron and steel industry at Port Kembla. New South Wales, where that company is erecting a plant. The combined capital of the four companies exceeds £23.000,000. Hoskins Company will be the largest shareholders in the new concern. Dorman, Long and Company will not hand over the Sydney Harbour Bridge contract, but will transfer all their other Australian interests; the new blast furnace being erected at Port Kembla by Hoskins will be taken over and the company will proceed immediately with the erection of further machinery, which will make the plant one of the most up-to-date in the British CHICAGO WHEAT (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian Press Association.) Reed 9.5 a.m. CHICAGO, Thursday. Wheat.—May, 1 dollar 45 3-S cents a bushel; July, 1 dollar 47 5-S cents; Sexitember, 2 dollar 4S cents.