BIG SHOP TRUST.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 September 1919, Page 10

BIG SHOP TRUST.

SCHEME TO ABSORB BRITISH MULTIPLE STORES. New York, June 11. The announcement is made here of a vast scheme to organise a chain of multiple shops throughout the United States and the entire world, which will be backed by some of the most powerful interests in the United States. The enterprise will be undertaken by a company calling itself the United Retail Stores Corporation, having a capital, to start with, of £20,000,000. The new company intends to open retail stores all over the civilised world for the sale of all kinds of products, principally dry goods, groceries, foodstuffs, tobacco, and confectionery. Existing companies controlling chains of multiple shops in various parts of the world will be absorbed, either by purchase outright or the exchange of stock, or else new chains will be established. The scheme will start with the British Isles and certain countries of South America and the East The promoters expect that great economy will result from the wholesale buying of standard commodities on an enormous scale. In many instances, supplies will be manufactured by the company itself, or perhaps produced on its own farms. The principal men behind the scheme are Mr. George W. Whalen,-Mr. James B. Burke, founders of the American Tobacco Company and the United Cigar Stores respectively. Since the dissolution of the American Tobacco Company by the Supreme t Court in 1912, Mr. Duke has been devoting himself exclusively to the British-American Tobacco Company.— The Times (London). >