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approval each time of the banking authorities, we think
this was about as firm and fixed a plan as a bank could
have under the circumstances. See Bleily & Collishaw,
Inc. v. Commissioner, supra. We do not believe the
requirement of a firm and fixed plan for redemption
need be as rigid under the circumstances here involved
as would be required in a closely held family
corporation situation where the plan could be changed
at any time by the actions of one or two shareholders.
Compare Niedermeyer v. Commissioner, supra, and
McDonald v. Commissioner, 52 T.C. 82 (1969).
As this Court’s opinion in Roebling confirms, the existence of
conditions, contingencies, or other uncertainties will not
necessarily preclude a finding that a firm and fixed plan exists
but is one factor that the Court must consider in reaching its
decision.
B. The Section 304 Redemptions
The foregoing cases and the principles we have extracted
from them require that we examine the facts in order to decide
whether petitioner engaged in the cross-chain sales and the later
sales of the target corporations as part of a firm and fixed plan
to completely terminate the target corporations’ actual and
constructive ownership of the issuing corporations.
1. The 1986 Cross-Chain Sale of Merlease
Petitioner’s evidence at trial focused almost exclusively on
the lack of any binding commitment or even an agreement in
principle between petitioner and Inspiration, the ultimate
purchaser of ML Leasing, on the date of ML Leasing’s cross-chain
sale of its Merlease stock to ML Asset Management. On the date
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