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contains much truth. The Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club has a monopoly of lawful gambling in the Colony but does not publish detailed accounts. As John Rear has noted: "It is difficult not to think that anywhere else but in Hong Kong the Jockey Club would have been forced to account more openly for the revenue it receives from its monopoly, which is virtually a licence to print money (Hopkins, op cit). There were two stewards of this exclusive club in the Legislative Council in 1975.
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The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation is the nearest thing in Hong Kong to a central bank. It issues about 90 per cent of the currency in circulation, operates a complex network of branches and subsidiaries all over the world, and in 1971 was ranked seventy ninth among the top three hundred commercial banks in the world. In 1959 it acquired another Hong Kong note-issuing bank, the Mer- cantile Bank Ltd. In 1965 it acquired a controlling interest in the Hang Seng Bank, the largest private Chinese bank in Hong Kong. In September 1975 it gained effective control of Hutchison Inter- national Ltd, one of the largest trading firms in the Colony. The bank also owns the largest foreign bank in the Middle East, the British Bank of the Middle East, and a 40 per cent stake in the World-Wide (Shipping) Ltd, probably the largest shipping company in the world (Fortune, February 1973). The chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation is a member of the Execu- tive Council, while two directors of the bank and the general manager of the Hang Seng Bank are members of the Legislative Council.
The bank also has a large holding in Jar- dine, Matheson and Co Ltd. William Jardine and James Matheson were two of the original opium smugglers; they were enterprising enough in 1829 to introduce the first opium clipper ship, and so made massive fortunes out of the increasing speed and efficiency of their operations. Today, their company has a finger in al- most every Hong Kong pie. The chief holders of power in the Jardine, Mathe- son empire are the Keswick family, bank-
ers in the City of London and prominent witnesses before the Bank Rate Tribunal, 1957. It was William Keswick, part time director of the Bank of England, who cabled the Hong Kong company advising it to sell its Gilt Edged holdings. "Again, this is anti-British and derogatory to Ster- ling but, on balance, if one is free to do so, it makes sense to me" he cabled (Paul Ferris, The City).
In 1973 at the height of the stock ex- change boom in Hong Kong the Jardine group had a market value of £5,000 mil- lion. Its main subsidiary, the Hongkong Land Co Ltd, was then, in terms of mar- ket capitalisation, temporarily the largest property company in the world and had a higher market value (but not real assets) than all major UK property companies put together. Its properties in Hong Kong's central district constitute one of the world's most valuable real estate com- plexes. In 1971 the chairman of Jardines held eighty seven directorships (Fortune, November 1971). He is currently also chairman of Indo-China Steam Naviga- tion, Hongkong Tramways, Star Ferry Company, Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown, Hong Kong Secur- ity, Container Services Ltd, Lombard Pensions Management, and several others. In addition, he is deputy chairman of the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co, and his directorships include the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the Dairy Farm, Ice and Cold Storage Co, and Rediffusion Television Ltd. In all, there are fifteen companies in Hong Kong which have Jardines' officials as chairmen or effective heads, regardless of Jardines' actual hold- ing in the firm. Wherever there is money to be made, whether through the fixing of insurance rates, securing public utility contracts, dealing in property, trading with China, expanding containerisation facilities, or shipping oil, Jardines is in- variably present.
David Newbigging, the present chairman of Jardines, is not a member of either the Legislative or Executive Councils. This is unusual, for the company has normally had someone there since David Jardine in 1850 became the first Unofficial Mem- ber of the legislature. However, apart from
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