THE PUBLIC TRUST.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXV, Issue 2125, 26 January 1909, Page 6

THE PUBLIC TRUST.

SOME AMAZING FIGURES

A recent London cable message which announced that the first year's operations of the newly-established Public Trust Office in England captured in the first year the enormous total of £20,000,000 worth of trust property, for administration under its Act—an Act which became law due mostly to the persistent efforts of the late Sir Howard Vincent, M.P.—recalls to our notice the operations of our local Public Trust Office (says the 'Dominion'). In New Zealand the value _ of the assets remaining on the books is about £6,000,000 sterling at the present time. Tliose assets will amount in the next decade, according to .the present estimates, to quite £15,000,000. This estimate is gauged not only by the normal increase of business, but from the circumstance that there are 5000_ wills of living persons already on deposit in the office—a number which is being added to at the rate of eighteen per week. At present the staff is located in three separate buildings and it is a matter of much gratification that the new and handsome Public Trust Office premises will be ready for occupation in March next. When those premises were designed three years jgo it was considered that the local staff could well be accommodated on the ground floor, but such has been the rapid growth of the office that it has been found necessary to take in another floor in the building. There are five storeys in this building and it is safe to predict that in 20 vears the Public Trust Office will need the whole of the place for itself. The bulk of the business is in connection with the administration of wills. The value in connection with those alone is over £2.000,000. The value of the native work is over £1,450,000, while the administration of the various sinking funds reaches the respectable total of £975,000. These sinking funds will rapidly increase as. since the passing of the. amendment to the Loans to Local Bodies Act of last session, it is stipulated that all the sinking funds attached to such loans must now vest in the Public Trustee absolutely ;■ that is, the Public Trustee is solo commissioner of the sinking funds. In what is known as the "pensions branch the work is growing very rapidly. This branch includes the work in "connection with the funds of the Civil Service Superannuation, the Police Provident, Post and Telegraph Classification, Teachers' Superannuation, Government Railways Superannuation, and the Permanent MiJitia Reward Fund, ami the contributions under these headings amounted in cash, for the year just closed, to over £150,000. ' The amount represented by mortgage investments of the Public Tmst Office stands at £2,540,000. These results are simply amazing when one considers that the office has not long emerged from its infantile stage, and that this young country was the first in Anglo-Saxondom to try the experiment of a Government office dealing with trust funds.