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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :---

TTIINC.O. 882

|ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO]

8 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

18

No further formal communication took place, and, on the 25th May, His Excellency himself formally wrote to the Managing Director exercising his powers under Section 3 of the Ordinance as follows:-

taking

Under the provisions of Section 3 of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Ordinance, Date of

1905, I hereby give notice to you that it is my intention to take over the undertaking of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company, Limited, on the 30th day of June, 1905,"

to which a formal bare acknowledgment of receipt was sent on the following day by Mr. Nicholson. The date of actually taking over has since been altered to the 1st July, as from which morning the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company will cease to manage the undertaking, which will be in the hands of the Board constituted by Section 20 of the Ordinance.

over.

holdern indigna-

tion.

The indignation of the Singapore shareholders at the action of the Government Share- could not be better evidenced than by the report of an extraordinary meeting of the Company, which was convened for the purpose of protesting against the Bill, whilst in Council (Appendix I.), and there is no doubt that the text of their case during the arbitration will be their objection "to be thrust out of so magnificent a heritage, built up as it has been by so much labour and thought on the part of the share- holders." The "self-denial referred to is presumably their alleged policy-in the words of the Managing Director, of "members entitled to receive dividends at the rate of 36 per cent., who had been content with 12 per cent. and invested the other 24 per cent. in the business."

"5

Passing now to what will probably be the

CASE FOR THE COMPANY,

it will have been observed the Company itself, if it did not actually initiate, Antici- fully accepted the substitution of the expression "undertaking" for the words pated case 'property and assets" in the Bill. Their counsel contended in Committee that that for the

Company. substitution notwithstanding, "the valuation can be made upon the land and upon the buildings separately" to which the Governor's reply was:-"That is not the case of taking over an undertaking, and if the land is necessary for the undertaking it is an essential part of it. We cannot,split up the undertaking and say so much for the machine-shops, piles, &c. We take over the undertaking and the land necessary for that purpose, the land being an essential part of the undertaking " (p. 11, Proceedings of 17th March, 1905). And later, at the same meeting (p. 16) His Excellency says:-"It is perfectly clear that the Bill is for taking over the undertaking as a going concern in the position it is now in, and if Government is to take it over on that basis, it is clear that there will be a payment for goodwill." At the next meeting of Council (24th March, p. 14) the Governor said:"As I said at our last meeting, the business of the Arbitrators will be to ascertain what the net earning capacity of the concern is, and upon that, taking it as an industrial concern, they will base the compensation to be paid to the Company; they will take what they ascertain to be the net earnings, and they will ascertain what is the return a shareholder expects from such investment, and upon that basis they will say what sum should be paid to the shareholders for the undertaking

(the) point will be to ascertain the net return of this undertaking and then ascertain how many years' purchase of these net earnings should be allowed, and that will be ascertained surely by seeing what is the usual rate of interest which an investor in this Colony in such an undertaking would reasonably expect to get."

This enunciation of the principle on which His Excellency conceived the com- The pensation for "the undertaking" would be based is, it is submitted, the correct one, Governor's and it was not, except as above referred to, challenged in debate. Such uncontro- principle verted opinion cannot, of course, bind the Court, and it is very probable that the of Company will endeavour to obtain the admission of what they may consider a more value. favourable mode of assessment. It may be contended that the definition of “ under- taking" in Section 2 supports the view submitted by their Counsel in Committee.

The time, however, has not yet arrived for the delivery of their claim, and it remains but to conjecture as to what shape it will assume. We may fairly expect that they will claim:-

22693r

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