Thursday, April 7, 2022

Who Runs Corporations, CEOs or the Board of Directors?

 


https://pixabay.com/photos/office-boardroom-meeting-table-1516329/

When you continue to dig you keep finding more. While we have mentioned previously Thomas Sutherland and his partners founding the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation with branches, in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Yokohama, while reading a very interesting book on a very important family we also found,




On pages 42-43,

"Bombay's inflationary share values had become less and less tempting to those who foresaw a sudden end to the cotton boom. China seemed a far safer and more attractive outlet for capital. But a central banking unit was needed to discount bonds and keep commodities and currencies flowing evenly. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation was duly established by an international group of 
merchants with a capital of % 5 million. It would merge the requirements and interests of the established agency houses and thereby short-circuit delays in referring bills to houses in Bombay and faraway London.

Hong Kong was the headquarters, with premises in Queen's Road first rented from the Sassoons and purchased outright from them a year or two later. Arthur Sassoon and Thomas Sutherland of P. & O. were original members of the Board. A major branch was at once set up in Shanghai where the two majestic bronze lions outside the Bank became one of the city landmarks. They would often be touched for luck by passers-by on the Bund. A smaller office was soon established in Yokohama to handle the fattening trade with Japan."

So, there you have it folks. One of Thomas Sutherland's partners was Arthur Sassoon. The Sassoon family was said to be the Rothschilds of the East by some. 

"At their peak of social and financial prominence, it was customary to describe the Sassoons as 'the Rothschilds of the East'."

Prologue. Page 1. The Sassoons. Stanley Jackson. E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. New York. 1968.

"They were one of the richest families in the world for two hundred years, from the nineteenth century through the twentieth, and were known as "the Rothschilds of the East.""

Front Jacket. The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire.  Joseph Sassoon. Pantheon Books, New York. 2022.

More on all of this later ...

References

Jackson, S. (1968). The Sassoons. New York, NY: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

Sassoon, J. (2022). The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.


A Connection Between Banking and Trading Houses II

  As research continues into the early days of banking and commerce it yields connections that become that much more interesting. The Hong K...