Abstemious Competitors

Investment bankers last week heard a cheering report: Equitable Life Assurance Society has decided that it will no longer participate in any private securities sales over $5,000,000. This would remove from the field one of the big insurance companies who are investment bankers' most intense competitors for new securities.

Mutual Life's Lew Douglas set the pace a month ago, when he deplored the fact that his company (along with two others) had outbid the bankers on a $90,000,000 A.T. & T. issue (TIME, Oct. 6). "The trend toward concentrated investment holdings is of doubtful economic and social good," said he. Another reason: if the insurance companies ever have to unload, it will be nice to have some solvent investment bankers around to help the distribution.

Equitable and Mutual are the No. 4 & 5 insurance companies. If the first three--Metropolitan, Prudential, New York--should follow their lead, the investment banking business would be in for a long-lost boomlet.

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