The—seventy-fourth—_ ordinary general meeting of the—P.
0. 8 N. Ca, was held on December 16 at the offices, Leadenhall Street, London, under the presidency of Sir Thomas Sutherland, 6.c.1.¢., Ltp., the chairman of the company.' The Secretary (Mr. Frederick John Abbott) having read the notice con: vening the meeting, The Chairman said:—At our Inst annual meeting we had the pleasure of laying before you a very favourable statement of your affairs, for the period then under review was one of our most successful years of recent date. I should have been only too glad if we had been able to put before you similar figures today: but you are accustomed to fluctuations in business, and know that no two years in shipping ae counts are ever exactly the same and we informed you that we antici pated a relapse in profits—not that we expected to be faced with a great war, but because of the enormous amount of shipbuilding, not only in Great Britain, but throughout the world, and also on account of the growing cost in all directions of navigation expenditure, more especially in the case of mail and passenger steamers such as our own. Providentially, I think I may we laid aside a' very handsome appropriation to our reserve fund; we put aside £200,000, which still remains there, and our total reserve fund may be computed as nearly as possible at £2,000,000.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.