BANKER’S MILLIONS

Hokitika Guardian, 29 November 1933, Page 8

BANKER’S MILLIONS

CAREER BEGUN AT THIRTEEN

WAGE OP FIVE POUNDS A YEAR

Once a clerk with a salary of £5 a year, Mr Robert Fleming, the Scottish financier, left a fortune of £2,174,803, with net personalty £2,049,059. Mr Fleming, who was herd of Robert •Fleming and Company, merchanrbankers, died in July last, aged 88

In hi s lifetime Mr Fleming gave £150,000 to enable 400 houses to be built for poor people in. his native Dundee, and also paid for a new village hall and recreation ground at Nettlebed. ‘His will, however, contains no bequests to charities, ; Mr Fleming left hi K residence, Joyce Grove,. Nettlebed, Oxfordshire, effects there, and an annuity of £17,000 to hi s wife. All other real estate in Oxfordshire and his house and effects in Grosvenor Square, London, to his eon Philip; £SOO to each executor; and the residue of the property equally between his three childreTi. He desired that hi s funeral should .be “of the mo'ft simple and unostentatious description.” Death will be about £870,000.

The late Mr Fleming began his /career as- a boy of 13 in a ..Dundee office .at a wage of £5 a year. At 21 he was promoted to a post a s book' keeper to lvs firm, and he then began to take a keen interest in the United 'States as a field lor investment;. . , v

He joined the firm of -Baxter •Brothers, of Dundee, and in 1870 he went to America on the firm’s busi ness and returned to Scotland filled with a determination to start an iri* vestment trust on new lines. The incorporation of the Scottish—American Investment Trust in 1873 was the result.

In 1888 Mr Fleming formed the Investment . Trust Corporation, which consolidated the .affaire of the group, and it. was .by his advice that two important American railroads were lu-bsequently (reconstructed. Mr Fleming founded in 1900 the banking firm of (Robert Fleming and Co,, of Crosby Square, London. <Hi s son, Major Philip Fleming, formerly -a well-known and stroked the . famous Leander crew on many occasions