Aus:
The Money Market Review, 16. November 1867. S. 503/504.
Schließen

Royal Bank of Liverpool. „Hushing up of Commercial Delinquencies.“

Entire loss of capital (paid up) und Reserves. Ausserdem Estimated Deficiency of £382,470. Interest und Expenses will make this £100,000 more. Call made of £10 per share. One Lady mit 900 shares will have to pay 90,000£. Ruin brought about by grossest mismanagement; besonders manager, submanager und managing director, und culpable neglect der other directors. Large sums advanced upon shipping. Much of this shipping was actually in the hands of the directors, and they were working it under agreements mit den owners, to whom they had made advances upon it. In the case of one of these shipowners, „the directors had entered into an agreement with him for the working of his estate und property for 5 years upon certain terms, and that agreement is still subsisting, and the debtor claims to have it carried out.“ In addition to such advances upon such securities as these, the Bank have for some time past been gambling in their own shares, and lost £46,000 upon those transactions. Original shares to the number of 1280 have been purchased since May 1860, besides preference shares to the number of 264, which the Bank have acquired by purchase or otherwise since 1858. These dealings in their own shares rendered legal by a special clause in the Co’s Deed. But most scandalous transactions of the Bank those with their own officers und directors. The manager is debtor to the Bank to £6,000, balance due upon 1000 shares which he had been allowed to take up, and for which he had paid only £2,850, the original debt having been £10,700. Submanager debtor to amount of £500, on account of 50 shares which he had bought. Of the directors, Bibby and Rae never indebted to the Bank; Holm indebted to the Bank for an old account in connection with McCormack, for which they held securities; Shand, another director, besides being a holder of 4000 shares, indebted to the Bank on his business account; Hutchinson, the managing director, besides being holder of 200 shares, considerable debt on business account. By him, Banner said, Bank would sustain heavy loss. Said ferner: „The agreements before alluded to were executed early in 1860; did not come before the general board; Bibby, Holme und Rae heard only of them after the stoppage of the Bank; they were carried out by the management, did not come upon the minutes of the general board.“ Banner said: It would be asked, what had become of the money? „He had the full particulars of the losses, and the names of these through whom they had been sustained, but it could do no good to publish them.“ „They could not blow up these debtors without doing an injury to themselves.“ He recommended, therefore, „the avoidance of all ill feeling and recrimination … he recommended a voluntary in preference to a compulsory winding up, because by the former they would avoid publicity being given to their documents und affairs.“ Shocking und Banner one of the most respectable men in Liverpool, und so his audience too Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen ! Nach dem law it is a criminal offence to compound a felony. Banner’s arguments have been used, and with fatal effect, for many years past by many boards of railway directors, and, under cover of it, (thus to get more out of the debtors) the duped and quiescent shareholders and debenture holders have been defrauded of millions invested in those undertakings. The same sort of thing has been practised in most of the recent Bank and other failures, and under cover of it the delinquent directors, the causes of those disasters, have escaped without a scratch. The same disposition „to make things smooth“, to „hush up“ observable amongst traders in bankruptcy courts, und still more outside these courts, where merchants und traders annually mulcted of millions of money, the loss of which they are content to put up with, in order to avoid publicity. All this has a most corrupting und pernicious influence. Bankmanagers und Bankdirectors, und traders who get into the confidence of banks with view and for the purpose of swindling them, und managers und directors of other Jt Stock Cos, all know und tempted to calculate upon on this disposition of the shareholders, liquidators, und creditors to hush up. They are told that the larger their transactions the stronger will be the disposition to cloak und cover them, to avoid publicity. Times of 13 Nov. (67) says: „These unscrupulous operators upon the banks [know] that if they can but get heavily into debt to a bank, the bank, when a certain stage of peril has been reached, will not dare to allow them to drop, and that when the final crash comes they may count upon the strenuous efforts of all the sufferers, not merely to palliate their proceedings, but to uphold them. Hence, amidst all the desolation they have caused, they not only escape reproach, but are usually favoured mit complimentary expressions of confidence, and not unfrequently the consequence is that when the storm has passed, they reappear, backed, in some cases, by advantageous family settlements made in previous times, as influential merchants or directors of new enterprises.[“]