PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 882
8
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
*
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2. I have addressed you fully on this subject in my confidential despatch of the 15th of June current, and, in the meantime, do not propose to take any action in regard to the draft Ordinance.
27783
DEAR SIR,
No. 8.
I have, &c.,
JOHN ANDERSON.
MR. J. ANDERSON to COLONIAL OFFICE.
(Received August 8, 1904.)
c/o Messrs. Guthrie & Co., Ltd., 5, Whittington Avenue,
Leadenhall Street, London, August 7, 1904. Re the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company, Limited, of Singapore..
I AM indeed sorry that I have not been able to fulfil earlier my promise to send you, in written form, some explanatory facts and my views bearing on a question touching this Company that is just now, I understand, under consideration by His Majesty's Colonial Office. (The delay has been owing to my having twice been laid aside ill since I saw you on 15th ultimo.)
I now beg to enclose a memorandum that I have written, dated 3rd August, 1904, and I trust it may prove of some service.
I have, in course of preparation, a second and additional memorandum† specially dealing with some irregularities in the above Company's service that are likely to have effect upon the important coaling trade of Singapore, and it I hope to complete and post to you on 9th instant.
C. P. Lucas, Esq., C.B.
(Confidential.)
Believe me, &c.,
JOHN ANDERSON.
Enclosure in No..8.
THE TANJONG PAGAR DOCK COMPANY, LIMITED, OF SINGAPORE. MEMORANDUM, dated August 3, 1904, by Mr. JoпIN ANDERSON, of Singapore (presently in London), recently Chairman of Directors of that Company in Singapore.
c/o Messrs. Guthrie & Co., Ltd., 5, Whittington Avenue,
Leadenhall Street, London, E.C., August 3, 1904.
MEMORANDUM
1. I had the honour of an interview, on July 15th ultimo, with Mr. C. P. Lucas, of the Colonial Office, Downing Street (to whom I was taken and introduced by Sir Frank Swettenham), the conversation being on the question of whether the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company, Limited, of Singapore, should or should not-in response to an application from that Company-receive financial aid from Government of the Federated Malay States to enable that Company to execute certain large works and greatly improve its facilities for the shipping trade of Singapore, these works having, I understand, been recommended by Messrs. Coode, Son, and Matthews as desirable and necessary for that Company to effect.
2. The belief is that the works recommended will cost fully fifteen million dollars (about 14 millions sterling), while the Dock Company's application-made to the Government of the Federated Malay States-is for a loan of ten million dollars.
3. The works and expenditure would be spread over about 10 years.
4. The Dock Company asked for the loan at a low rate of interest and suggested three per cent. per annum.
5. I write this memorandum for His Majesty's Colonial Office, with full liberty to make it available to the Governor and Executive Council of Singapore. Beyond these I would prefer it to be treated as confidential.
6. There can be no harm in mentioning that I have had over twenty years' con- tinuous and close experience, on its Directorate, of the inner working of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company. Throughout the greater part of the last five years I have
† See No. 10,
• No. 6.
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been Chairman of the Company, and have had much and unique opportunity of study- ing its relationship to, and effect upon, the shipping and transhipment trade of Singapore.
7. The application by the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company to the Federated Malay States for a loan of $10,000,000 was made on a suggestion of my own to, and adopted by, my co-Directors while I was still Chairman of the Company in Singapore. 8. I assume that what will guide Government to its conclusions on this subject are the answers to the following cardinal questions, viz.:-
(a) Quite irrespective of the personal interests of shareholders are the works of extension and development suggested for the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company necessary to enable Singapore to maintain and improve its position as an attractive centre of trade and transhipment, and of dis- tribution apropos of the archipelago, &c.?
(b) If the answer to ("a") be in the affirmative, and if Government decides not to give financial co-operation, will the Company itself proceed to carry out the works recommended, and will it of itself effect them in desirable manner and in reasonable time?
9. The capital of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company is 300,000. Besides this it has raised money on debenture mortgages aggregating $1,015,500. These together make a total of $5,315,500.
10. I estimate that about 70 per cent. (more or less) of the share capital of the Company is possessed by people in England, merchants of years long gone by retired from the Straits Settlements, relations, connections and friends of these, clergy- men, widows, &c., many of whom are mainly dependent on the Company for good dividends, and many of whom are in much ignorance of its working, its needs, its responsibilities, and even of the nature of its business.
11.
What a great number of these shareholders do know, is that it is a Company that used to pay them 24 per cent. per annum; that on the 1st January, 1899, each share they then held was converted into two shares on paper, and that on these latter the Company now pays them 12 per cent. per annum.
12. Very naturally, what most of these people entertain as their trust and main hope is, that nothing shall be done that will interfere with or jeopardize a steady continuance of this 12 per cent. dividend; and their faith is pinned to the body of London gentlemen representing them (known as the "London Consulting Committee of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company ") to whom they look to see that nothing shall be done that would cause their incomes from this Company to shrink.
13. In kernel form that is the position; and, located, as 70 per cent. of the proprietors of the Company are, in Britain, it is a very natural condition of feeling to have grown upon shareholders in England.
14. Whatever the gentlemen of the London Committee may say now, to gloss or smooth over awkward questions, they must at heart be in sympathy with, and first consider the incomes of, the people in England whom they claim to represent and work for.
15. The London Committee can hardly be expected to say to these shareholders in England: We have not in years past seen to the gradual building up of this Company's facilities for retaining its trade and satisfactorily meeting a heavy expan- sion and development of that trade. We are very sorry, but we suddenly find that works, which will involve expenditure of a million and a half sterling, are abso- lutely necessary over the next 10 years. This being so, you will recognize that there is a time drawing near when your dividends must shrink very seriously, and the selling value of your shares decline."
16. To say and admit this, would hardly be human. Nevertheless, that, in nutshell form, very closely represents the position.
17. The undertaking of large and expensive works by the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company is not of the free will and desire of a large majority of the proprietors in Britain of that Company.
18. If proof of this is wanted, I have only to refer to the command of the London Committee upon the Directors in Singapore of the Company that the report of Mr. J. R. Nicholson, M.I.C.E., the Company's Managing Director, in which these large works were recommended as a necessity for the port, was to be suppressed from shareholders "unless it (the report and recommendations) could be accompanied by evidence that the works could be financed without endangering a dividend of 12 per cent." That is clear; it is unquestionably on record; and it was a command that had to be, and was, obeyed.