If anyone still has any doubts on the question of separation of owner-~ ship and control under modern capitalism, the report of a recent Production Engineering Research Association conference on "Financial Management and Cost Control" (Engineering News, 17th June, 1965) should put them wise. Clearly,in the view of the main contributors to this conference for profess= ional managers, the basic interest of the manager is still identical with the owner and the shareholder, no matter how remote they may be from the actual day-to-day running of industry.
"The measure of profitability of a business is the rate of interest on the capital employed in the business" said J.P. Wilson, President of the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants. If this statement seems too much of a truism, the aims of industry were put even more clearly by Professor A.J. Merrett, of Sheffield University! department of Applied Economics, "A company should compare what it has made for its investers over the last ten years with what rival companies have made for their investors," he said. "Often, this would show that the company had not been doing as well as its yearly reports had indicated." Could the aim of maximising profits be put more bluntly?