<--PREV Doc #728  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #730 Document #729; February 15, 1954 To Aksel Nielsen Series: EM, AWF, Name Series: Nielsen--Real Estate Investment The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part IV: "Pushing ahead along the broad center"; December 1953 to March 1954 Chapter 9: Fending off "the reactionary fringe"   Dear Aks: Your explanation is very fine.1 There are only two points on which I want to ask a question. a. Should I not make out both checks to your order so that when you put the investment in your name, you can use your own check to purchase it?2 b. Concerning the extent to which the several stockholders might be obligated in the future as indicated at the end of your letter, will this liability be a large one? The reason I must ask this question is because the bulk of everything I own is tied up in an irrevokable trust that I cannot touch until the 20th of January, 1957. (The only way the trust could be broken is for me to kick the bucket, in which case my heirs can get it.) However, if the maximum additional investment over the next three years would be something on the order of five thousand dollars, I could handle that easily enough.3 Your suggestion that you give me a letter stating that you are holding these items for me is, of course, the way I should like to have the transaction handled merely to avoid getting my name personally involved in any investment--no matter how worthy and no matter how small.4 After you receive my checks, won't you please send me an additional copy of the necessary letter, marked duplicate but signed, so that I can give one to Schulz to put in the safety deposit box. The other I will have in my own files. I will send the checks as soon as I hear from you as to the questions I have asked above. I am deeply grateful to you for all the trouble you take for my account. As ever P.S. You didn't tell me anything about our heifer being in the show. Did they notice her at all?5 1 Nielsen, friend and financial adviser to the President, had sent details of an investment opportunity in a shopping center in southeast Denver (Feb. 8, 1954, AWF/N: Nielsen--Real Estate Investment). He enclosed a plat of the site and a recent financial statement of the corporation developing the shopping center. He listed the percentages of stock owned by the major stockholders and explained that 25 percent was owned by Guaranty Corporation, a "solely owned subsidiary of The Title Guaranty Company"--of which Nielsen was president. "When we are through with this transaction," Nielsen wrote, "Guaranty Corporation will own 20% and I will hold 5% (for you)." He asked Eisenhower to send him a check for 302 shares of common stock in the company. This letter to Nielsen apparently crossed with a letter from Eisenhower to Nielsen, dated February 9, in which Eisenhower apologized for having "forgotten to carry through" on the arrangements for the shopping center investment; he asked that Nielsen be prepared to discuss it on March 16 at a White House stag dinner (AWF/N: Nielsen--Real Estate Investment). For background on Eisenhower and Nielsen's real estate investments in the Denver area see Galambos, Columbia University, nos. 998, 1003, and 1100; and Galambos, NATO and the Campaign of 1952, nos. 35, 235, and 275. 2 Nielsen had asked Eisenhower to include a second check to cover the cost of a loan to the shopping center developers bearing interest at the rate of 5 percent, "so as to get some of the working capital back without having to pay it out in the form of dividends." In his reply of February 19 (ibid.), Nielsen said that it would be "perfectly satisfactory" to make the checks payable either to him or to the Guaranty Corporation. "I will have no difficulty," he assured the President, "in keeping your identity out of it, in either case." 3 Nielsen had said that the "stockholders will probably have to loan the company a little more money, or buy a little more stock as we expand the Center, by building more buildings and completing the improvements." In his reply of February 19 Nielsen would explain that money needed for future capital in the shopping center would depend on the cost of the new buildings and of securing a loan for construction; it would also depend on whether or not sale of land to a department store would be considered capital gain or normal income. Nielsen suggested, however, that the "$5000.00 is an outside figure." 4 Nielsen had suggested this in his letter of February 8. 5 For background on Eisenhower and Nielsen's investments in cattle see Galambos, NATO and the Campaign of 1952, nos. 275 and 599. For developments see no. 1557. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Aksel Nielsen, 15 February 1954. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 729. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/729.cfm <--PREV Doc #728  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  First Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #730

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