FOREIGN COMPANIES. Of the three companies heretofore licensed by this Board to do business in this Commonwealth in a manner similar to our co-operative banks, two have for some time been in the hands of receivers; and during the past year the other— the Minnesota Saving Fund and Investment Company - has withdrawn its agents from this Commonwealth, and is not now soliciting any new business here. The company named has met with an experience similar to many other such companies, and been obliged to take into its possession large amounts of real estate originally pledged for loans, but on which the borrowers could not keep up their payments. As a result of this condition of affairs, the company, in order to meet such loss as might arise on the property when sold, caused an assessment of 10 per cent. to be levied on the stock, which amount is to be deducted as shares are withdrawn. The company thus far has been unable to meet the demands of its withdrawing shareholders; the officers of the company are disposing of its real estate as fast as sales can be judiciously made, and hope in due time to be able to pay what is due to shareholders resident in this Commonwealth, for whose benefit the sum of $65,477.06 is on deposit with the Treasurer and Receiver-General. THE SECURITY SAVINGS AND LOAN ASSOCIATION OF MINNE APOLIS. The amount referred to in our last report as deposited in the State treasury has, by order of the court, been distributed among those shareholders resident in this Commonwealth whose claims were allowed by the special master appointed for that purpose, Henry A. Wyman, Esq. The amount distributed was equivalent to 21 per cent. of the claims; after the other shareholders shall have received from the other assets of the association a dividend equal to the one paid here, all the shareholders will share equally in the remaining assets. The receiver of the company in Minneapolis filed his first annual report with the court there in December last; he expects to be able to pay every creditor fifty cents on the dollar. THE AMERICAN BUILDING, LOAN AND INVESTMENT SOCIETY OF CHICAGO. In relation to this company, we can add nothing to what was said in our last report, that future dividends, if any, "will depend upon the result of litigation now going on." The experience of the three companies referred to, and the result to those who have invested therein, appears to fully warrant the action of the Legislature in 1896, in adopting a statute prohibiting the transaction of such business within this Commonwealth by any company not licensed so to do previous to the passage of that law. CONCLUSION. The following pages show the financial and statistical statements of the several institutions. In the Appendix are given the statutes relating to co-operative banks and mortgage loan and investment companies. The collateral loan companies are all incorporated by special acts of the General Court, and there is no general law regulating their business. STARKES WHITON, WILLIAM D. T. TREFRY, WARREN E. LOCKE, Board of Commissioners of Savings Banks. |