THE GLASGOW BANK FAILURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1809, 8 December 1879, Page 3

THE GLASGOW BANK FAILURE.

Mr John Stewart, formerly chairman of the Board of Directors of the City of Glasgow Bank, who was liberated from Ayr Prison on Wednesday, October Ist, was examined a few days afterwards in the Glasgow Bankruptcy Court. He deposed he was a partner of the firm ol Stewart, Pott, and Co., wine merchants, Glasgow, and that the firm was dissolved prior to his sequestration. He was a shareholder and director of the City of Glasgow Bank, and was chairman of the Board for the year ending 1878. He had no personal interest whatever in being a director of the bank, and the result had been to ruin him. He implicitly trusted the officials of the bank, and although he had been visited with very severe legal consequences, he did not think he had been guilty of a moral wrong in the slightest degree. He considered it was entirely in consequence of the misdeeds of others that he was placed in the unfortunate Sosition he occupied. His liabilities were put own in the state of affairs at £32.255, and his assets at £17,545, so that there was a deficiency of £14,800 odd. On Saturday last an action was served upon him by the liquidator of the City Bank for over six millions of money. He had not yet had an opportunity of looking into the statement contained in the summons. His trustee was in possession of the whole particulars, which explained the changed aspect of his affairs as compared with his position prior to the stoppage of the City Bank. His heritable properties were put down in the state of affairs without any value being put upon the reversions of the bonds, but before the stoppage of the Bank there was supposed to be a reversion of about £26,000, which represented capital he had sunk in the properties. At the time of the stoppage of the Bank he had £44,380 of ordinary stock of the New Zealand Land Company ; that stock he assigned to the Bank, or in trust for the Bank, immediately after the stoppage. The object of the assignation was to cover debts of £14,000 which he personally owed to the Bank, as well as obligations which he had undertaken to the Bank on behalf of others, and after that assignation he considered that he had far more than enough to pay all his other creditors. He had, along with others, undertaken obligations to the extent of £22,641 for the Mongos Iron Company (Limited). He got no value for that debt, and up to the stoppage of the Bank he expected that the company would pay their debts and relievo him. There were other obligantg for that debt, three of them being directors of the Iron Company, and all were bankrupts. Question. —Now, taking the shares which you say were assigned at par—that is, taking them at £44,380 —and deducting from that amount all your own personal obligations of £11.350 and £2650, amounting together to £14,000, yon have a balance of £30,388, which should have remained if the other obligants had paid their portions ? Answer —That is so. Besides holding the ordinary stock of the Australian Land Company, he also held preference stock of that company to the extent of £30,500 at the date of the stoppage of the Bunk. He at once assigned £16,500 of that stock to other Banks to whom he was indebted. The amount of his indebtedness to these Banks was £12,500. The remaining £14,000 of the preference stock had either been realised or formed part of his estate. At the stoppage of the Bank he held £IOOO of stock, and the calls made upon it amounted to £27,500. That now appeared as a liability in the state of his affairs. After the stoppage of the Bank he gave up his whole estate. The statutory oath was administered.