"We Like Matty"

Matthew Fox has a solid reputation as an expert kibitzer and operator, with an inordinately sharp eye for a fast buck. A movie man by trade, he has backed such side bets as Bub-0-Loon, three-dimensional pictures, the "everlasting match" (TIME, Oct. 13). Last winter he quit his $150,00b-a-year job as executive vice president of Universal-International Pictures to make side bets his life work. One of them turned out to be a new main chance: the Indonesian Republican government heeded $80,000 fast, and Matty Fox thought he could arrange it. He did. Then he, got down to cases.

The Indonesian archipelago looked to Matty as if it would soon gain its Independence from the Dutch. What the budding republic needed, he decided, was a man like Matty Fox to brace up its economy. The Indonesians, who thought themselves friendless, were enthusiastic.

Plenty of Stockpile. By last week the enthusiasm had bloomed into the American-Indonesian Corp. Its guiding spirit, needless to say, is Matty Fox, who holds 51% of the corporation's voting stock. He will do all the Indonesian government's bulk buying & selling in the U.S. and will try to find U.S. risk capital to build up the islands' mines and industries. Says Dr. Soemitro Djojoadikoesoemo, Indonesian trade commissioner to the U.S. who negotiated the deal: "We need U.S. capital and skill ... We like Matty."

Matty likes the prospects. His company will take a 5% cut on every ton of goods that it moves. First haul in sight: $170 million worth of rubber, tin, pepper, tapioca, etc., already stockpiled and ready for shipment as soon as the Dutch lift their economic blockade against the islands.

Meanwhile, the Dutch have argued that Fox's contract violates the Renville truce agreement under which they keep full sovereignty (and the right to negotiate foreign agreements) until 1949. The State Department, always sensitive to the more enterprising doings of its nationals abroad, has said nothing officially yet.

Plenty of Room. Fox himself is anxious to dispel any suspicions that he stands to profit by unfair "monopoly" or "state trading." His contract, he says, affects only about 25% of the islands' total trade ($450 million in 1940), and private Indonesians are free to deal with whom they please. Competitors, he insists, are welcome--particularly from the U.S.

There is method in Matty's seeming madness about U.S. competitors. Before the war, Indonesia was the hallowed preserve of Dutch and British traders and cartels (notably tin and rubber), which all but shut U.S. business out of the islands' billion-dollar-a-year (at '48 prices) trade. Matty Fox is determined to keep them from regaining their hold. Last week he was making the rounds of U.S. companies, inviting them to step right through the archipelago's open door--when it opens.

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