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Show Geneva May Go To Colorado Firm Latest Developments In Regard To Disposal Of Geneva Steel Plant Indicate Congress Opposes Sale To U. S. Steel Corp. Two developments attending preliminaries leading toward disposal dis-posal of Utah's Geneva steel plant indicated to experts in Washington Washing-ton this week that the Geneva plant eventually will be sold or leased to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. These leading developments are 'the attorney general's report to Congress which opposes sale of Geneva to U. S. Steel Corp. and which is taken as an indorsement of disposal to CF&I and, secondly, the fact that Henry J. aKiser has dropped out of the picture. The attorney general in his report re-port to Congress maintained that "disposal to eastern steel interests? inter-ests? especially those with water access to western points, would substantially lessen competition and could retard development of western facilities." His report highlighted the fact that U. S. Steel purchase of Geneva Ge-neva would mean that the corporation corpo-ration would be cutting in on its own Pacific coast sheet metal market mar-ket supplied by its Birmingham, Ala., plant. "If the U. S. Steel Corp. were to obtain the Geneva steel plant" the report' declared, "it would not only have approximately 80 per cent of the pig iron producing capacity ca-pacity and 53 per cent of the steel making capacity west of the Rockies Rock-ies but it would be confronted with the problem of duplicating light rolling facilities recently established es-tablished at Birmingham. Its incentive in-centive to develop tin-plate facilities facili-ties to compete with itself could not be expected to be great. "Careful provision must be made against acquisition of the plant by those having other interests that would be protected by limited operation op-eration at Geneva." Stating that the "important requirement re-quirement for market participation" participa-tion" by Geneva is "an aggressive selling policy," the report observed that there is "grave doubt" that an eastern steel concern would adopt such a policy. Attention was called to the fact that unless railroad freight rates are reduced, U. S. Steel's Birmingham Birming-ham plant, and other eastern mills, operating company-owned steamships steam-ships will have an advantage over Geneva in supplying west-coast rolled sheet demands. The report also recommended: 1 D.P.C. "Should use every effort ef-fort to establisha reasonable commercial com-mercial rail rate prior to disposal" dispos-al" of Geneva. 2 Government should finance quired to produce sheet steel at Geneva "construction to begin as soon as possible." 3 Plant should not necessarily be sold to highest bidder. 4 If satisfactory independent purchasers cannot be found, "every "ev-ery effort should be made to se- cure independent, competitive operation op-eration ' under lease, purchase price to be determined on the basis bas-is of actual operating experience over reasonable period." The report pointed out that western wes-tern steel interests are largely "complementary to, rather than competitive with Geneva," and could promote production at Geneva Ge-neva without harming vested interests. |