The properties in the United States owned and controlled by the Postal Company represent an investment in lines and equipment aggregating about $25,000,000.
In order to perpetuate the name of his father, the virtual founder of the Commercial Cable and Postal Telegraph Companies, Mr. Clarence H. Mackay, President of the United Companies, recently addressed a circular letter to the stockholders inviting the deposit of their stock for exchange for shares in a trusteeship created under the Massachusetts laws with the name of “The Mackay Companies.”
The capitalization of the Commercial Cable Company, which also owns the Postal Telegraph and Cable Company, is $15,000,000, upon which 8 per cent. dividends are paid.
“The Mackay Companies” has authorized for exchange for this stock $30,000,000 par value of its own 4 per cent. cumulative preferred shares and a like amount of common shares, so that each stockholder in the Cable Company will receive for his holdings 200 per cent. in the common shares of the new concern.
The Trustees are Clarence H. Mackay, John I. Waterbury, President of the Manhattan Trust Company of New York; T. Jefferson Coolidge, jun., President of the Old Colony Trust Company of Boston, both directors of the Commercial Cable Company, and Mr. W. Cook, Counsel to the Company.
The plan is practically consummated.
Mr. Mackay said in reply to an enquiry that this action on his part was the outcome of his desire to put on a permanent basis the properties created by his father, and to provide for all contingencies that might arise from death or changes in commercial conditions. He will continue to devote his entire time to the active management of the Company.
The Commercial Cable Company owns and operates four transatlantic cable lines and its connecting lines between Nova Scotia and New York, and Ireland and France, in all some fourteen thousand miles of cable, with also the cable from San Francisco to Honolulu and thence to the Philippines.
The Mackay system has an exclusive connection with the Canadian Pacific telegraphs and with the all red cable line to Australia and New Zealand.