GENIUS OF FINANCE

Hawera Star, Volume L, 25 October 1930, Page 9

GENIUS OF FINANCE

O’Hagan’s Amazing Career

TPHE absorbing story of the career of shire, Birmingham, Croydon, ManchcsMr Henry Osborne O’Hagan, who ter, Bury, Heywood, Eochdale, Oldham, died on the Biviera recently, is told Gateshead, Stockton, Worcester, North by an intimate friend in the London and South-East London, as well as some “Daily Telegraph.” Mr O’Hagan had in Germany and Holland. O’Hagan to a large extent outlived his day and never visited the United States, but he activities, but at one period he was the carried to success some of the greatcentre of the commercial life that arose est amalgamations of that country, and in the latter half of Queen Victoria’s for a time he was, as a company proreign. motor, the biggest figure in America. He was born in 1853, Ihe son of an He conducted transactions m brewirishman, who, with brilliant abilities erics, Chicago junction railways and as an engineer, had hard luck and died stockyards, meat companies, packing in Honduras while engaged on a scheme companies and insurances. For a while for building a railway to carry ships he was interested in the theatre. He from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The backed Miss Jennie Lee, “Jo,” who son was left without means; his first died recently, when she was trying to job was a clerkship at 10s a week, but bring “Bleak House” before the pubby the time he was 17 he had set up lie, and he just missed backing “The in business for himself. Private Secretary.” But theatrical

T.t would be ridiculous to say that O’Hagan invented underwriting—it had existed for more than half a century — but he was the most prominent and successful apostle of that method of doing business, and it never became the big thing it ultimately was until this penniless boy took it in hand. He brought out company after company with astounding frequency and almost unbroken success. His office became the resort of every man in London or A.in erica who had a big scheme to launch on the market. Crowds of people thronged his private offices in Albany, convinced that if once they got U’Hagan at the back of them they were sure of gigantic success.

ventures did not interest him greatly. His method of conducting business was quite different from that of any of his contemporaries. In the midst of the wildest storm of speculation he did things in his own way, and calmly determined that every year he would give a certain number of months to’ ieasure and practically to idleness. These months he spent, in wandering \n a beautiful yacht, in the Mediterranean, and no appeal, however desperate, could induce him to go home except at the time it suited him. He remained calm amid tempestuous commercial enterprises. He had his ups and downs even in his prosperous career. He put down at least £50,000 as the sum he lost in the first attempt to introduce tramways into Ireland. But he had an extraordinary power of meeting the reverses of fortune as calmly as its dazzling successes. He had a modest but beautiful residence at Birchington. Ho had a place at Hampton Court, which lie transferred to his son years ago. Above all, he had a most attractive house on the Riviera—the Casa Mara at Boquebrune.

O’Hagan was in everything and everywhere. He realised the immense possibilities of the tramway when the tramway was just coining into existence as a profitable undertaking. The first horse tramways in the West of London were the product of his initiative, and during a period of eight years he constructed tramways in all parts of the country—North and South Stafford-