A HOPEFUL BANKER

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 23, 28 January 1924, Page 6

A HOPEFUL BANKER

Statements made by bankers to meetings of shareholders are usually accepted as having been well considered before delivery, and every word in them fully weighed. In these circumstances, the ordinary reader* is entitled to attach some importance- to the slightly prophetic rema.rk9 of the Hon. Regnal* M'Kenna, . Chairman of the London Joint City and Midland Bank—one of the " big five"—that the industrial, commercial, and financial outlook in Great Britain is brightening, and " we are nearing the end of the most trying period." Mr. M'Kenna believed that some change in mentality for the better tvoold be the outcome of the. labours of the Reparations Committee-. An improvement is long overdue, and all the while Gseat Britain is the main market for New Zealand produce this Dominion cannot afford to be indifferent to the course of events in the Mother Country, and in other countries too, so long as they are in any way connected with its fortunes. Bankers are rather shy of assuming the mantle of the prophet, and Mr. M'Kenna may prove no exception; but the confidence displayed by woollen. maiiufa*ctuvers^ of Great Britain and the Continent in the wool market, as expressed in the high prices they are now paying for the staple, is something like a harbinger of the better times following the trying period to which Mr. M'Kenna referred. The British Railway trouble, serious as it is, may impose no more than a temporary check on prices for certain commodities from which 'the Dominion derives its ■wealth from without; but the great event which it is so fervently desired to see brought to pass is the restoration' of stability in Europe. Of that Mr. M'Kenna is hopeful too, as a result of the work now being done in indicating the direction that certain nations should take to escape from the slough of despond into which some have wandered and some have ■ been dragged.