Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/234

 pays £172,000 in dividend and bonus, puts £60,000 to reserve and premises and £10,000 to provident fund, and adds £11,000 to carry forward.

The disadvantages of these companies from the investor's point of view are:—

(1) There is a liability on the shares, most unlikely to be enforced, but still there.

(2) There are only three of them to be invested in, and

(3) The market in the shares is far from free.

But in the matter of stability of the business their advantage over any ordinary industrial investment is evident since, whatever may happen to this trade or that, there is always a mass of trade to be financed. The distribution of risk is world-wide in extent, and the elimination of risk is the constant aim of the experts, trained to tell a good bill almost by the feel of it, who manage these companies.