IBA

On their best behavior were the 500 gentlemen at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. last week for the 23rd annual convention of the Investment Bankers Association of America. A more sophisticated group than the commercial bankers who rumbled into Washington last fortnight only to have their leaders surrender to the White House, the investment bankers kept their fulminations strictly to themselves. Scrupulously deleted from the IBA's official press releases were all exciting passages.

Deeply grateful for small crumbs, the bankers praised the amendments to the Securities Act, humbly suggested a few others to make the law more workable. They thanked the Government for aiding their oldest clients, the railroads. And, most notable of all, they called upon their biggest clients, the public utilities, to desist from their efforts to block the Government's power plans.

Burning its own power platform of three years ago, IBA declared: "Fundamental principles are by way of being tested, and fallacious theories must be refuted not by argument, but by actual experience." Government competition was merely a "challenge to the leadership of the industry." IBA even admitted that "evidence of fairness" on the part of Tennessee Valley Authority was "by no means lacking" (see above).

Having thus buttered the President as thoroughly as the President buttered the commercial bankers the week before, IBA elected as president for the coming year Brown Harriman & Co.'s Ralph T. Crane.

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