BIG BUSINESS IN LITTLE ALLEYS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 18

BIG BUSINESS IN LITTLE ALLEYS

Humble Offices Still Used In London Even in these days of magnificent buildings and luxurious comfort many of the men who are behind Britain's financial prosperity prefer the modest offices in which their great businesses first developed, says a correspondent of the “Daily Mail,” London. Hiding away in the alleys of the city are the headquarters of brokers and bullion dealers known and respected all over the world. Herr von Ribbentrop, at the annual dinner of the German Chamber of Commerce for the United Kingdom, held iu London, drew a romantic little picture ofjfig business done in small oflices in London when he was here before the war. He said that on one occasion he had to see an important firm, and it was only after a considerable search that he found “a little office, in a little street, up a little alley.” In that office was a man engaged in big businesses not only in the British Empire, but in almost every country of the world. “I came away,” said Herr von Ribbentrop, “thinking that here was one of the miracles of London.” In the London discount market, which is not a market in the ordinary sense at all but merely a collection of individual firms and companies whose business it is to discount bills of exchange, millions of pounds of bills change hands by word of mouth from the seclusion of an armchair in a comfortable but small office amid the lanes and alleys of Lombard Street.

Against the background of Wall Street skyscrapers the contrast is striking indeed. I have in mind the hospitable hearth of Mr. O. B. Granville, one of the best known figures of the London money market, the size of whose business was overwhelming in comparison with the accommodation required in which to transact it. An Economy. But times are changing, and amalgamations of firms and growth of staffs, due sometimes to the increasing complications of business, are swinging people over from small offices to the more spacious floors of the many modern buildings erected in the City since the war. As perhaps the most notable example of what Herr von Ribbentrop had in mind, 1 may recall the redoubtable figure of Sir John Ellerman, who built up the bulk of his immense fortune of more than £35,090,000 from three or four small and plainly furnished rooms at 12 Moorgate Street. ' They were in an old building which, with others surrounding it, stood on the site now occupied by the National Building Society. Sir John bad to walk up two flights of stairs to reach them, for he never had a lift, always averring that he could not afford such a luxury. Off St. Swithin’s Lane is the famous New Court of the Rothschilds. The old-world corner in which the bullion and banking business of Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Sons is now housed is typical of the secluded alley of which Herr von Ribbentrop spoke, although the offices to-day are the reverse °£ small. But before the present building was erected there was, I believe, one small part which the first Lord Rothschild would not allow to be touched. “That,” he is reported to have said, “was good enough to build up my business and make nry money, and it is good enough to sit in now.” Not small, perhaps, but in another by-way, Founders’ Court, are the offices of Brown, Shipley and Company, the merchant banking firm with whom Mr. Montagu Norman, the present Governor of the Bank of England, was formerly associated. Considering the immense value of their annual turnover of the precious metals, Messrs. Sharps and Wilkins, the well-known bullion dealers, are modestly housed in Great Winchester Street, which is a turning off Old Broad Street.

Apart from Lombard Street, Throgmorton Street, and their immediate environs, there is a network of lanes and passages in which many leading firms of produce brokers do a big business in small offices. There is one old address—3S Mincing Lane—which hides itself up a courtyard at the entrance to which are large heavy double doors of wood and iron. In this courtyard there are really three buildings, but all bear the same address of No. 38.

In one of these Messrs. Win., Jas., and Fly. Thompson, one of the oldest and largest firms of tea and rubber brokers, have had their offices since the days of the famous tea shippers.

Harnett, Lampard and Heilbut, Limited, the rubber brokers, are also at the same address.