Out of the Mattress

At 11:30 one morning last week, the New York Stock Exchange was swamped by a sudden deluge of orders to buy Curtiss-Wright.

Trading in the stock was suspended for two hours and six minutes to give clerks and traders a chance to catch up. Six minutes after trading was resumed, another time-out had to be called. By the end of the session the volume had reached a whopping 146,000 shares, nearly 10% of all shares traded that day. And Curtiss-Wright common was up 2 1/4 points to 10 3/8 a share. Next day, despite the market's general decline (see below), Curtiss-Wright edged up to 10 3/8% of on a much greater volume of 194,400 shares. The stock ended the otherwise distressful week at a fancy 11 1/8.

The cause of these high jinks was an abrupt settlement of an issue that had plagued Curtiss-Wright Corp. for months. The company had come out of the war with a mattressfull of money--$100 million--but it was short of postwar business. The management, which thought there was only a "limited and unprofitable" postwar market for its aircraft engines and planes, wanted to hold the cash to tide the company over the uncertain future. But a group of vociferous stockholders last winter complained that the cash in the mattress alone was about three times the market value of its stock. They wanted some of the cash paid out.

The result, at the company's annual meeting last spring, was a free-for-all brawl for control. The opposing factions tried to shout and push each other down, and held a tug of war with company records. They finally had to call a cop (to restore a modicum, of order) and go to court before the quarrel was temporarily settled in favor of the adamant management. But the management had had a bad scare.

New orders for military aircraft (TIME, May 31) made Curtiss-Wright directors decide that the company's outlook was much improved. Last week they declared a $2 dividend on the common. It took traders no time at all to calculate that that was a return of close to 20%. And there was still more to come. Curtiss-Wright's President Guy W. Vaughan announced that at least $1 a share -- and additional dividends as the "directors deem prudent"--would be paid in 1949.

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