BIG BUSINESS DEAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19321, 7 May 1926, Page 13

BIG BUSINESS DEAL.

SALE OF ANTHONY HORDERN'S THREE MILLIONS INVOLVED. (FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] SYDNEY. April 2a. The acquisition of the business of Anthony Hordern and Sons, Ltd., by a new company for £3,000.000, with Sir Mark Sheldon as chairman of the new company, and Mr. Justly Rawlings, the present general manager, as the managing director, recalls one of the most romantic chapters in the history of the retail trade in Australia. This vast business, employing over 3000 hands, and occupying a huge block in the heart of the city, with floor space of over 30 acres, apart from its factories arid transport depots and fleets, exemplifies the imagination and far-sightedness of those who laid the foundations of it in one of the choicest parts' of a city that was then something of a struggling village. More than 100 years ago Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Hordern arrived in Sydney with two sons, Anthony and Lebbeus. Mr. Hordern started business as a wheelwright, later established a drapery business, with his wife watching the millinery department of it, and subsequently followed his son te Melbourne. But the son, with the eves and the mind of youth, believing that" his father had erred jn leaving Sydney, returned to it, and started the business out of which the present emporium has developed. The business has grown and expanded with the city until to-day it is a vital part of its verv life. Successive generations of the family have carried it, on, although it was only in 1901, following a tire at. the then existing premises, that Mr. Samuel Hordern, founder of the for- j tunes of the present family, and a millionaire nearly four times over when he died, planned the erection of the present enormous structure. Under the terms of Mr. Samuel Hordern 's will the estate became trustee property, with his son, Sir Samuel Hordern, as governing director. Sir Samuel Hordern— and no one'in Sydney has more strikinglv exemplified, by his citizensl/p, the dignity of modern business—proposes now to devote himself more largely to public affairs. One of the most esteemed figures in Sydney, the community will be the richer for his more direct interest in public matters. The fact that the profits of the business for fjic past year were over £250.000 affords some idea of the turnover and ramifications of the vast concern.