STRONG TERMS USED

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 614, 16 March 1929, Page 9

STRONG TERMS USED

BRITISH COMPANY BANS FOREIGN CAPITAL BREEZY COMPANY MEETING LONDON, Friday. Epithets such as “plunder,” “not playing the game,” “robbery,” “inTernal proposal” and “dishonesty,” were employed when the shareholders in the General Electric Company, Limited, met yesterday to consider a proposal to issue new capital, to be restricted to British holders. Nevertheless, the restriction was approved by a large majority. Sir Hugo Hirst, the chairman and managing- director, said the directors had been dismayed at finding that the kerb market in New York was dealing with the company’s shares and raising the price abnormally. Steps were immediately taken to prevent any attempt to secure foreign control. When he returned from Australia he found that over half of the ordinary capital had wandered across the Atlantic. It had always been his ideal that the company should mean the same thing in Britain as the General Electric Companies in America and Germany meant in those countries.

There are indications that a sharp controversy will arise out of the company’s exclusively British issue of shares. The city editor of the “Daily Telegraph” expresses the opinion thift considerable damage will be done if by force of example there is an indiscriminate rush to deprive foreign shareholders of their rights. The “Daily Chronicle” says the decision of the company strikes a blow at the position of the City of London as the world’s financial centre. This is the unanimous opinion among responsible authorities in the city. The consequences if foreign companies retaliate would be most serious. “The Chronicle” says the Board of Trade s estimate of net income from overseas investment is £285,000,000 a year. If British shareholders were deprived of voting rights and subscription rights in foreign countries it would cause a heavy loss to the national income and wealth.

Sir Hugo Hirst may succeed in making the share list of the General Electric Company British, but not without offending the British sense of fair dealing, and damaging the prestige of the City of London.

. Colonel J. Wedgwood, Labour member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, asked a question m the House of Commons on Thursday about foreign discriminations against British capital. lie suggested that steps S ta Fen .against discriminations Tvnicri were injurious to Anglo-American feeling, such as were recently “perpetrated by a super-patriot of German origin.”

The president of the Board of Trade, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister said legislative restrictions on either the export or import of capital were impracticable Colonel Wedgwood: Are you not anxious to open up Britain for the investment of foreign capital? Sir Philip: I think it most desirable to attract foreign capital to Britain. That is one of the results of safeguarding, but legislation with this object is undesirable.