WASHINGTON, May 16, 1911 (UP) -- Here is what an individual shareholder is the Standard Oil Co. may expect to happen to him in the dissolution of the trust.
The decree requires that the 37 companies forming the combine be divorced from each other; that there be no common ownership of stock, and that they be conducted as separate entities, liquidation of stock is the logical way.
The Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey controls through direct ownership 37 companies. There are 988,383 shares of this stock outstanding. Each holder of one share of stock in the New Jersey, or holding corporation, therefore owns a fractional share of the value of the oil companies, represented by the fraction 37 over 988,383. To attempt to equalize the value of this share in the business of the combine without liquidating would be impossible.
The recourse left open to the combine, therefore, is sale of its stock and distribution of the proceeds to its stockholders. The New Jersey corporation would sell its shares of stock in each of subsidiary corporations and itself go out of business. The decision specifically states that each corporation in the combine shall be conducted as an independent entity.
The six months given by the supreme court as the time within which the trust must dissolve is expected to be ample.