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SIGNATURE VINCENT P. CORTI
TITLE SECRETARY
January 31, 1996
To the Board of Directors of
The Investment Company of America, Inc.
In planning and performing our audit of the financial statements of
The Investment Company of America, Inc. (the "Fund") for the year
ended December 31, 1995, we considered its internal control
structure, including procedures for safeguarding securities, in
order to determine our auditing procedures for the purposes of
expressing our opinion on the financial statements and to comply
with the requirements of Form N-SAR, and not to provide assurance on
the internal control structure.
The management of the Fund is responsible for establishing and
maintaining an internal control structure. In fulfilling this
responsibility, estimates and judgments by management are required
to assess the expected benefits and related costs of internal
control structure policies and procedures. Two of the objectives of
an internal control structure are to provide management with
reasonable, but not absolute, assurance that assets are
appropriately safeguarded against loss from unauthorized use or
disposition and that transactions are executed in accordance with
management's authorization and recorded properly to permit
preparation of financial statements in conformity with generally
accepted accounting principles.
Because of inherent limitations in any internal control structure,
errors or irregularities may occur and not be detected. Also,
projection of any evaluation of the structure to future periods is
subject to the risk that it may become inadequate because of changes
in conditions or that the effectiveness of the design and operation
may deteriorate.
Our consideration of the internal control structure would not
necessarily disclose all matters in the internal control structure
that might be material weaknesses under standards established by the
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. A material
weakness is a condition in which the design or operation of the
specific internal control structure elements does not reduce to a
relatively low level the risk that errors or irregularities in
amounts that would be material in relation to the financial
statements being audited may occur and not be detected within a
timely period by employees in the normal course of performing their
assigned functions. However, we noted no matters involving the
internal control structure, including procedures for safeguarding
securities, that we consider to be material weaknesses as defined
above as of December 31, 1995.
This report is intended solely for the information and use of
management and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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