INTEREST PAYMENTS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 147, 19 December 1933, Page 12

INTEREST PAYMENTS

IN LONDON IN STERLING

. It is reported that advice has been received of a judgment of the Privy Council holding that dividends on- stock held by the Prudential Assurance Co., Ltd., in the Adelaide Electric Supply Co., Ltd., a company registered in liluglahd but carrying on business exclusively in Australia, must be paid in sterling for the full amount and are not to bo subject to deduction for Australian exchange.

In February of this year Mr. Justice Farwell, iii the Chancery Division at Home, when the case came-, beforo him, said that in his opinion the obligation of the Adelaide Electric Supply Co., Ltd., was to pay the dividends on the stock in question in English currency. He was unable to .find anything in a resolution of the defendant company of January 19, 1921, which affected in any way the prima facie obligation of, the defendant company to pay those dividends to the English stockholders in English pounds, and the Prudential Company was therefore entitled to succeed. He 'carefully refrained from expressing any opinion as to' the position of stockholders in Australia.

Subsequently the Adelaide Electric Supply Co., Ltd., appealed from this decision to the English Court of Appeal. The Court, however, dismissed The appeal. Mr. Wilfrid Greene, K.C., on benalf of the appellants, said that he felt in a great difficulty owing to the decision of the Court of Appeal in Broken Hill, Proprietary Co., Ltd., versus Latham and others (supra). There were contentions that could be made on behalf of the appellants "in the present case which might not' have been made in that case, but he failed to see how ho could ask the Court to depart from their previous decision.

The Master of the Rolls agreed that that.was so, and said that the appeal must be dismissed with costs.