Big BUSINESS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 13092, 13 February 1937, Page 9

Big BUSINESS

IN LITTLE ALLEYS. HUMBLE OFFICES STILL USED JN LONDON.

jTJVEN in these days of magnificent buildings and luxurious comfort many of the men who arc behind Britain’s financial prosperity prefer the modest offices in which their great businesses first developed" (says a correspondent of tho “Daily Mail,” London.) Hiding away in tho alleys of the city are the headquarters of- brokers and bullion dealers -known, and respected all over the world. Hrfrr von Ribbentrop, at the annual dinner of the German . Chamber of Commerce for. the United Kingdom, held in London, drew a romantic little picture of big business done in small offices in London when lie was bf*re before the war. He said that on one occasion lie 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 Umpire, but in almost, every country of. tho world “1 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 end alleys of Lombard street Against tho background of Wall Street skyscrapers the contrast is striking indeed. I have in mind tho hospitable hearth of Mr O. IL Granville, one of the bestknown figures of the London money market, the size of whose business was overwhelming in comparison with the accommodation required in which to transact it. 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 fo ihe 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 Bibbentrop had iii mind, I may recall the redoubtable figure of Sir John Ellerman, who built up the bulk of his immense fortune of more than £35,000,000 from threo or four small and plainly furnished rooms at 12 Moorgate Street. They w<*re in an old building which, with others surrounding it, stood on the site now occupied by the National Building Society. Sir John had 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 cld-world corner in which the bullion and banking business of Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Sons is now housed is typical of tho secluded alley of which Herr von Bibbentrop spoke, although the office's to-day are the reverse of small. But before the present building was erected there was ,1 believe, one small would not allow to be touched. “That,” part which the first Lord Rothschild he is reported to have said, “was good enough to Build up my business and make my money, and it is good enough to sit in now ” Not small, perhaps, hut 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 tho precious metals, Messrs. Sharps and Wilkins, tllf; well-known bullion dealers, are modestly housed in Groat Winchester Street, -which is a. turning off Okl Broad Street. Apart from Lombard Street, Throgmorton Street, and their immediate environs, there is a network of lanes and passages in which many lending firms of produce brokers do a big business in small offices. There is one old address—3B Mincing Lane—which hides itself up a courtyard at the entrance to which are largo heavy doubles 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. Wm., Jas., and Hy. 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, Ltd., the rubber brokers, are also at the same address