Commercial Morality. (Continued) (The Overends.)

Aus:
The Money Market Review, 30. März 1867. S. 387/388.
Schließen The comments of some of the London newspapers on this Overend affair, and the no-comments of others are equally significant. The Times City luminary, and others, denounce generally (declamiren gegen) all new Cos., legitimate or illegitimate. That „sort of thing“ easy. Aber in this case of one of the most gigantic and unmitigated frauds ever recorded in our mercantile history, Times all soft sawder. No mitigation in judgment possible for the 3 new directors. Never was a clearer case of deliberate misrepresentation so indubitably brought home to any parties. Times and Economist are continually discussing this as a common and ordinary case of misadventure or miscalculation only for which nobody ought to be blamed or punished. They constantly and vehemently denounce the shareholders in not submitting with proper resignation to a further process of fleecing (and allowing Kerls like Oppenheim to win by a legal fraud), whilst depreciating any further investigation into the mysteries of the affair. They do their utmost to slur over its iniquity, and to whitewash and rehabilitate the delinquent directors. The Economist, last week (23 March) emphatically explains that it „does not mean to impute to the new directors or the old partners the slightest formed intention to deceive the public“. Unformed intention perhaps? „The sellers“, he says, „thought they were selling a good thing; the buyers thought they were buying one; and both joined in telling the world what they thought.“ Most outrageous perversion of truth! Neither the sellers (old firm) nor the buyers (new firm) thought any such thing; both of them knew the contrary, and, therefore, instead of „both joining to tell the world what they thought“, they both joined in executing a secret deed to conceal from the world what they knew, and that fact reveals to us what they really thought. Economist again repeats that it „does not mean to impute a hint at conscious fraud, in the minds of either the new directors who bought or the old partners who sold“. Unconscious fraud? And, therefore, the evident consciousness of the necessity for concealment? Poor perversions, shifty arguments, shallow sophistries. Speech of Scholefield (at the meeting of English and American Bank) asinine. If the new directors were men of ordinary business capacity, they were not deceived, also fraudulent. If they were deceived, how fit to be directors as utterly wanting in ordinary business capacity.

Aus:
The Money Market Review, 30. März 1867. S. 393/394.
Schließen  Zusatz von Marx. „1915“ ist das Pseudonym eines Verfassers einer Reihe von Leserbriefen an die „Money Market Review“.
Schließen 1915 sagt u.a.: Scholefield and 7 Confederate Boards endeavour to save their protégé. Gordon had no deposit in the concern nor any shares beyond his bare qualification as official recipient of £500 a year. He was a party to the secret deed of arrangement by which the separate estates were to fill the gap of insolvency by 31 Dec. 1868 at the latest. He was subsequently privy to the sale of the Norwich Bank, whereby its goodwill and assets, besides being payable only on certain conditions, were not to be realised before 1 March 1870, 14 months beyond the stipulated time for final adjustment as between private firm and limited Co. He knew that, in connexion with the sale which thus virtually annihilated nearly 1/2 of the separate estates, the remaining portion of the same was assigned as a guarantee to the purchasers of the Norwich Bank, just as it had been previously assigned to the limited Co. At or about |260 the sale of the Norwich Bk. Gordon sanctioned an exceptional loan of £150,000 to the private firm beyond even the requirements of the secret deed of arrangement. In his affidavit (November 1866) Gordon constantly recognised Mr. William Rennie alone among the directors as his associate in the negotiations and investigations, which led to the transfer of the business from the private firm to the limited Co.