ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 127, 30 May 1901, Page 2

ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

(From Our London Correspondent)

LONDON, April 19 THE NATION'S CREDIT.

ft will perhaps be rather hard to convince Antipodean?; that we of the Old Country are groaning under an almost unbearable weight of taxation when they learn how swiftly .Sir Michael Hicks-Beach's little sixty million loan was eaten np. Before the public got a chance one half of the amount was earmarked by arrangement with syndicates. One headed by the Eothschilds took a little mouthful of £20,000,000, and 'tis said the Yankee .financier Morgan sampled ten millions worth of the oew loan. The public were allowed to come in at 10 o'clock on Monday morning, and before two o'clock the: £30,000,000 available was all applied | for, and Ky the end of the day, it is said, there were applications to the| tune of £90,000,000. This result isj eminently satisfactory in pne way,! but .we feel that Sir Michael ought to have let the public go for the lot. We don't like American syndicates getting £10,000,000 of gilt edged security at bargain prices. And bargains the successful applicants will get, for unless very untoward things happen we shall see the new loan quoted at par ere the year is out. The public saw it was good and went for it. Their eagerness wasn't born of pure patriotism by any means. The terms on which it was offered were very satisfactory to the investor, though hardly so satisfactory to the taxpayer, who will owe sixty millions to the investors, but will actually receive only £56,700,000; or, in fact, less than that sum. For though the £100 stock is offered at £94 10/, when the facts are taken into account that a full quarter's dividend will be paid on July 5, and that allowances will be made to investors who pay cash in full, the net price to those who pay at once instead of by instalments will be about £93 14/. The result of the loan has not justified Sir Michael's finance, but at the same time we must admit that he had to borrow at what appeared a very unpropitious time. Consols stand a< the lowest price at which they have stood since 18S0 when they rose to par for the first time. Their price in 1896 reached £113 10/, so that the fay during the last five years has been very serious. Still we can't help thinking that Sir Michael has not. made the best bargain possible with investors.