SENSATIONAL FINANCE

Taranaki Daily News, 30 September 1929, Page 15

SENSATIONAL FINANCE

SOME CRASHES OF THE PAST. THE POSITION OF HATRY. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, Sept. 27. It seems that the London money market, like all other money markets, is treated to financial crashes that have repercussions of niore or less magnitude. The latest of such financial crashes is that furnished by Clarence Charles Hatry, the “Croesus of Finance,” as his friends dubbed him. He graduated from insurance clerk to financier, but, like most. of his class, he was not always' successful. ..The ; present trouble;:appears to be due to over speculation, which again is due tb over optimism. When the latter takes possession of a financier or speculator all his geese are swans, and he deludes himself with the idea that he cannot go wrong,, and the flattery of friends and financial parasites rather confirms him in his mistaken belief. Now Hatry, with his associate directors, Daniels, Dixon and Tabor, are under arrest, and that bail was refused them is an indication that the charges pending are of a very serious character. The charge will eventually prove to be financial fraud of a complicated character. It would not matte- very much if a high financier crashed, but' unfortunately these crashes drag others in, and already a finance and trust company has ben badly hit. It will probably be some days before the losses incurred by this latest financial crash are known. History of the past few years records many such crashes, and fundamentally they were all due to the same cause of over speculation. The earliest collapse that the writer can call tn mind is that of Jabez Balfour, who worked with the funds of the Liberator Building Society, and overran the constable. He skipped to South America, and it was some time before his identity was detected''.' He was extradited, and it - was Detective Tunbridge who brought him back in custody. Tunbridge was later commissioner of our own police force. Then there was Ernest Terah Hooley, who was known as the “Jubilee Plunger.” He was a brilliant star in the financial firmament about the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, hence his title. Hooley exploited the pneumatic tyre, then quite new, and was very successful, and no doubt made a good deal of money. Hooley’s forte was company flotation, and he was a great believer in having good names in the front page of a prospectus. Ho liked to have peers among the provisional directors. Hooley had an idea about New Zealand’s frozen meat trade, and made an offer through a Wellington solicitor to buy one orjnore companies which he intended to? refloat in London with an inflated capital.. . Hooley’s offer,' however, was turned down. Hooley finished up his career rather badly. / Whittaker Wright was perhaps not so brilliant as he was eer-

tainly clever at financial jugglery.: Wright, however, ventured beyond hia depth. Hia dramatic suicide after being sentenced to a long term of imprison-ment-was a more than ordinary sensation. '■ . The above were the pre-war financial stars, and cannot be compared to the brilliancy of the post-war comets. One’ of the earliest of these was Gerald Lee Bevan, .who manipulated insurance finance, particularly the Equitable Insurance, and left "his financial and other friends,, and skipped by the light of the : moon However, the long arm of the law reached him in time, and hA finished up in the usual place. About , two .or three years, ago "Jimmy” White,, as he was known, by his intimates, over speculated, - and,; when hard pushed, committed suicide rather than face the ordeal. "Jimmy” was very popular, and very generous and open-handed. He is supposed to have abandoned bricklaying for finance, and had a good following, many men in high stations with titles accepting him as their financial guide. The case of Captain Alfred Loewnstein will be fresh in the memory of most readers, for he accidentally,, or otherwise, dropped out of an aeroplane whejg crossing, the English Channel. stein was the son of a small in Brussels, and became a member the Stock Exchange. Nothing much known about him until after the when his star began to shine with nHH brilliancy, and he acquired' am tional reputation. He was principally concerned with transport,. light . ’ arid, power undertakings. He was associated with Dreyfus Brothers, . Swiss chemists, who held* control on the technical side. Ho quarrelled with his associates, and they set to work to break him, and eventually succeeded. ‘ A more recent case wai that of Bradreth, the chairman of a company. HA was more a muddler than a financier, and - badly tangled up the affairs of his company. Ho tried to get away but failed, and his present address is H.M.Gaol.