Canada in Trust

High up in No. 1 Wall St. are the Manhattan offices of Calvin Bullock, investment banking house. There also are the roomy offices of Calvin Bullock, Denver banker who branched east. Calvin Bullock is unique among large banking houses in that it is a proprietary business; there are no partners, no "& Co." Quiet, slow-spoken Calvin Bullock is the firm of Calvin Bullock. Last week Bank & Banker Calvin Bullock launched a new investment trust, Canadian Investment Fund, Ltd., designed to invest primarily in Canadian industry.

Like many another thoughtful banker, Calvin Bullock believes that Canada will recover from Depression more rapidly than the U. S. Just as Canada boomed less boisterously than the U. S. before 1929, so has it slumped less dolorously since. Banker Bullock also believes that Canada is in a stage of industrial development comparable to the U. S. before the turn of the century, when investment opportunities were lushest. That his new trust may be in on the Canadian know, may garner the fullest harvest for both Canadian and U. S. investors, Banker Bullock has assembled an amazing roster of Canadian potency for his directorate. With him on the board will sit President Arthur Blaikie Purvis of Canadian Industries, Ltd., "the du Pont of Canada"; Hon. Louis Alexandre Taschereau, foxy Prime Minister of Quebec since 1920; Sir Robert Laird Borden, Wartime Prime Minister of the Dominion and head of Barclay's Bank of Canada; Norman James Dawes, head of National Breweries, Ltd.; Hon. Charles Avery Dunning, a power in the prairie provinces; Hon. Charles Colquhoun Ballantyne, head of Sherwin-Williams Co. of Canada (paint); Sir Charles Blair Gordon, president of Bank of Montreal and an officer or director in some 25 corporations. Flippant brokers annoyed Calvin Bullock's Montreal office by solemnly inquiring why His Majesty George V failed to be elected to the board. The new trust will invest a small portion of its funds in such U. S. companies doing a large Canadian business as General Motors, Eastman Kodak, National Dairy Products. But on its strictly Canadian commitments, if & when Canadian exchange recovers to par, the trust will make a profit of about 14%, the current discount of the Canadian dollar.

It is 38 years since Calvin Bullock founded his investment business in Denver. From a small local securities dealer, he spread into Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and a half-dozen other big cities. Able Hugh Bullock, only son of 'the founder, opened the Manhattan office a few years after he was graduated from Williams in 1921. In fact but not in name it is now the head office. All but one of its executive personnel (who have no titles) are Denver men, as are most of the branch office managers. Its research department is famed for Statistician John Walker Barriger III, one of Wall Street's smartest railroad analysts. All of Calvin Bullock's business is wholesale except in Denver where it still deals directly with old retail customers. Of its investment trusts, both fixed and management type, Calvin Bullock has sold more than $200,000,000.

Though Banker Bullock still has a home in Denver (which he says is the only truly western city), he spends most of his time in Manhattan. A shy, retiring little man, he lives in a duplex apartment on Park Avenue, has never been photographed for the Press. Last week he was even reluctant to release a reproduction of an oil portrait belonging to his son. Calvin Bullock advertisements never carry the firm's address. Bushy-browed, slightly bald, he prefers talking about his collection of Napoleonana to talking business. Prized items include the personal chest which Napoleon carried on many of his campaigns, a bust of himself which Napoleon carried to St. Helena, Lord Nelson's dress sword, a pair of Lady Hamilton's earrings. On the wall to the right of Banker Bullock's big desk is the famed copy of the London Times of June 22, 1815, carrying the first four-day-late hearsay story of the Battle of Waterloo. Stuck down at the foot of the page among a jumble of advertisements and personals, the story carries no headline. Significant of the current swing to the middle ground between the management trust of pre-Depression days, when no limitations were set upon the investment policy, and the fixed trust of last year, when investors paid as much as 10% as insurance against any management, were two restricted management trusts floated last week:

P: North American Bond Trust Certificates, representing 200 high-grade bonds and designed to appeal to small banks, was offered by Distributors Group, Inc. P: Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. offered Supervised Shares, Inc., a trust which can buy or sell any or all of a list of 56 approved common stocks. If holders of 25% or more of the stock do not object, the trust may also buy other securities.

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