ENGLISH 'MONEY MARKET

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 59, 10 March 1903, Page 3

ENGLISH 'MONEY MARKET

SPECULATORS EXCEEDINGLY

CAUTIOUS

NEW ZEALANDEE'S IMPRESSIONS.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

CHRISTCHURCH. this day,

Mr A. T. Harper, who went Home fifteen months ago on a futile effort to float the Reeves' Proprietary Gold Dredging Company on the London market, has returned to the colony.

At present, he told a "Star" representative, the public at Home is fighting shy of anything in the way of speculations, and is expected to do so for quite another year. While the war was going on in South Africa it was generally thought that the declaration of peace would be followed by a boom in the money market. When peace came, however, everything was so uncertain that the public was afraid to move, and tbe result was the intensifying of the previous slump. The public declined to come in to help the underwriters at any ]ir: i-. and the underwriters were consei My in trouble. They had not for-fci-eii the slump, but bad gone on loading themselves up with stock in the expectation of getting it off as soon as peace was declared. Unhappily, the boot was on the other foot, and t.\.y were left lamenting with much too big a load, so they were unable to undertake further liabilities unless the public came to their aid. and the public bad not. There is, and there Ims been for some little time, a great disinclination on the part of the public to indulge in anything speculative, and anything in the way of mining business is quite irrevocably "tapu." The large South African fields, of course, hold the first place in the London mining market, and until some very definite pronouncement is made as to future policy in the now colonies, there is unlikely to be a move at Home.

Mr Harper is of the opinion that even when the money market recovers itself there will be little chance of New Zealand benefifing to any great extent. The underwriters' commission is, he thinks, too large to suit colonial dredging com-

panics. There is any amount of money in England, and the general opinion is that it is as plentiful as ever. _*_t speculation is dead. The only concerns which are at all readily taken up are well-founded industrial companies.