ROMANTIC CAREER

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12163, 13 June 1925, Page 5

ROMANTIC CAREER

RISE AND FALL OF J. C. GOULD SLUMP ENGULFS SHIPPING FIRM BANKS REFUSE CREDIT By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Australian and N /. Cable Association (Received June 12, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, June 11. At a meeting of the creditors of J. O. Gould, the governing director of at great Cardiff concern, now insolvent, it was disclosed! that in 1915 he began with ’an investment of £SOO m a shipping company. Later he formed Gould, Ltd., shipbrokers, and oth>r firms, which in 1920 were amalgamated and became the Gould 1 Steamship and Industrials, Ltd., of which he became manager at a salary of £IO,OOO ard a percentage of the profits.

In 1922, after the shipping slump, the company bought out a Stockton firm for £1,250,000. Gould, in order to meet the decline in business, deposited securities with the banks for the purpose of raising capital, but finally the banks refused him advances. He computed the assets of the com-

pany in 1920 at £5,000,000; bow they were worth only £500,000. His own personal'liabilities amounted to £440,000; his assets consisted of shares which he could not value, and arrears in salary. „ The creditors appointed a trustee. The company’s authorised capital is £3,000,000, and £500,000 in debentures has been issued. Mr Gould, who was formerly a member of the House of Conunons, has had a remarkable career. The son of a working man, he went to South Africa 'as an ordinary seaman, but left the fe.hip there and worked as a clerk. He then went to the United States, where he was employed successively as a labourer and an insurance clerk. He studied insurance and became the head of the largest, New York marine reinsurance company. In 1908 he established a reinsurance firm in London, with branches throughout the Continent. When the war ruined the reinsurance business he became a shipbroker and shipowner. Through his knowledge of the Continental reinsurance ramifications he revealed how Germany was learning from this source the movements of British shipping. The company is a victim of the world slump (nd the continued shipping depression.