CO129-555-6 Banking crisis 24-9-1935 - 18-10-1935 — Page 13

irmail. (Imperial)

te

Colonial Secretary's

Hong Kong.

18th October, 1935.

13

Corry to Ail. Ezee.

My dear Vernon,

I have now visited Shanghai and seen Leith-Ross, and am sending to Waley at his request by this airmail a summary of the present position of his negociations. I will not repeat in this, which will be longish anyway, what I have said to Waly, nor this

to him.

Your airmail letter of October 4th had not arrived on October 17th when I was writing this; but I hope that it will arrive on Saturday the 19th, and will wait at least till then before ask- ing you to cable. But the other, if it leaves you on October 18th, may be a bit late, and I expect that we shall ask for a cabled

summary of it.

Since I wrote my letter to you of September 24th about banking in Hong Kong, I have found out that, even if the balance sheet figures of the various Wing On concerns are accurate, they are incomplete, because there is another subsidiary, the Wing On Cotton Mills, which is a Chinese Company operating in Shanghai, and

Its balance sheet is therefore does not come under Hong Kong law. not available; but it is said to be in a very bad way, and the position of the whole group may be worse than its Hong Kong balance

sheets show.

There appears to be little doubt, however, that the Wing On group, if it stood by itself, could be kept going without much difficulty: the dangerous one is the Sincere Company. When I was in Shanghai, the Treasurer of the Municipality (J.K. Choy) who had

R.V. Vernon, Esq., C.B.,

Colonial Office,

Downing Street,

LONDON, S.W.I.