Word: sofina
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...battle, and perhaps ready to give way a little. In delicate financial parleys in Paris, March and the March-manipulated Catalonian power combine-which supplies electricity to Spain's most industrialized region-were negotiating at long last to settle their 13-year battle with Belgium's giant Sofina power syndicate...
...fight, which began in 1948, is a classic example of the way March has built his financial empire. The holding company of the Catalonian utilities had been The Barcelona Traction, Light & Power Co., Ltd., a Canadian corporation that was in turn controlled by Sofina. Eager to take over the utilities, March persuaded Franco to ban the export of their profits to Barcelona Traction's Canadian headquarters. Cut off from its sources of revenue, Barcelona Traction could not pay the interest on its outstanding bonds, most of which were held outside Spain. They tumbled in value, were quickly snapped...
...Barcelona Traction held all of the Catalonian utilities common stock in Canada, the courts ordered "duplicate" shares printed in Spain, auctioned off the counterfeit shares to the highest bidder-who was, of course, Juan March. Control of the multimillion-dollar empire thus passed to March for only $900,000. Sofina, left with a paper corporation, fought the case through the courts, spent more than $3,000,000 on legal fees. Even if Sofina wins a whopping settlement (prospect: $13 million to $16 million) March has a bargain...
...Catalonia and the Ebro valley where the Spanish Loyalists made one of their last great stands. Since 1910, Ebro had dutifully paid out profits to its owner, the Canadian-incorporated Barcelona Traction, Light & Power Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of SIDRO, in turn a subsidiary of Dannie Heineman's Sofina...
Three years later, March sent an emissary to Heineman in Manhattan with a new ultimatum: if he would not yield Barcelona, he could expect blows at CHADE, another SOFINA subsidiary in Spain. CHADE, though it owned no interests in Spain, used a Madrid office to collect the profits from the huge power interests it owned in Argentina (CADE). Heineman hastily moved CHADE to Luxembourg, where it transformed itself into SODEC (an identity it had used in a previous move to save its financial skin during Spain's civil...