The Biggest Private Cheque.

Manawatu Herald, 2 March 1899, Page 3

The Biggest Private Cheque.

■ ♦ j £5.338,650 CASHED. The largest sum of money that has ever been disbursed from a private bank in one cheque emanated from South Africa. It represents no less than £5,338,650, and was paid by the De Beers Diamond Comoany to the liquidators of the Kimberley Central Diamond Company, when they purchased the latter company's rights in July, 1898. ■Some idea of the fabulous wealth of the De Beers Diamond Company can be formed when it is remembered that the cash balance at their bank is sn r great as.to permit a payment being made for nearly five and a half mil*

Hans sterling at one fell swoop, Not only was the cheque drawn but it was cashed. Surely commiseration would have been extended to the unfortunate clerks if the operose task of counting out this tremendous sum had fallen to them. Why if it were devoted solely upon one clerk capable of counting one hundred sovereigns per minute, he would have to work incessantly throughout the tweuty four hours for nearly forty days before he would have completed his appointed labours, and by the time he had finished he would have a pile by his side if the coins were superimposed one above the other nearly seven miles high, or some eight thousand feet higher than Mt Everest, the highest mountain in the world. If placed side by side, it would make a long golden belt extending for seventyfour miles, while they would turn the scale at over forty tons. Probably no one would object to this sum being invested for his benefit and being permitted to live upon the interest, for, at the current Bank ot England rate of 3 per cent, £5»338,650 would yield a perpetual income of over £160,000 a year.