-Caveat Lector- Lazard Freres connections with Hudson’s Bay Company Management of the London office of Lazard Brothers has long been delegated to the Kindersley family. Sir Robert Molesworth (Lord Kindersley), while chairman of the board of Lazard Brothers, also sat on the board of the Bank of England. Kindersley had also served as governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, a fact that is instructive to one who has a knowledge of the history of this company. In 1670 Hudson Bay was granted a charter from the King in Canada to engage in fur-trapping, together with title to the land from Labrador to the Pacific. In 1863 the British government supported imperialist Edward Watkin in buying the stock of the company and all its assets. A public issue was floated to raise capital to pay off the former owners and to build the Grand Trunk Railroad also controlled by Watkin. Watkin was also involved in the British North American Association, which attempted to persuade the British government that railroads and other forms of transportation and communication in Canada and the maritime colonies "served a significant Imperial function." The bondholders and stockholders of the Grand Trunk and advocates of the North West Transportation Company (headed by William Dawson) were also having difficulty securing enough funds to complete their projects and employed lobbyists in England to promote their cause. Dawson hired the investment firm of Robert Benson to obtain a government subsidy from London to carry mail from the Atlantic to Pacific. Even before the subsidy was granted, he formed a syndicate of investors in London, which included Pascoe Charles Glyn, younger brother of George Grenfell Glyn (the Glyn family was associated with a number of investment banking firms including Morton Rose, Glyn Mills and Robert Benson himself). The Duke of Newcastle, colonial secretary under Lord Palmerston, was the primary proponent in the government of colonial subsidies. However, his support for reimbursement for certain expenses incurred by the companies for encouraging settlement of the colonial lands was offset by his refusal to agree to pay the companies the value for any of their chartered lands which became Crown Colonies. Newcastle had contact with Watkin as well as other capitalists and financiers interested in Canadian development. An organizational meeting for the British North American Association was chaired by Robert Wigram Crawford, City of London M.P. and director of the Bank of England, and was also attended by Robert Benson, Thomas Baring and George Carr Glyn—the leading bondholders of the Grand Trunk; by William Newmarch of Glyn, Mills & Co.; Arthur Kinnaird of Ransom, Bouvierie & Co.; and Philip Vankoughnet, an agent of the Canadian government. These men on July 5, 1862 requested assistance for the construction of a road and telegraph line across the British North America, asking for a subsidy in the form of land grants rather than money. Signatories of the petition also included William Chapman and Kirkman Daniel Hodgson (Baring Brothers partner and member of Hudson’s Bay committee). The land, of course, was to come out of the grant made to Hudson’s Bay under its 200-year-old charter. In 1863 Watkin opened up discussions with Hudson’s Bay Company’s attorney, Joseph Maynard about a possible purchase of the company and its assets. The Company’s accountant had valued the chartered rights in Rupert’s Land at 1.5 million pounds and other property at another almost half million pounds. Hudson’s Bay offered to sell all the stock for 1.5 million cash paid within 6 months. The British government refused to pay, stating that all funds must come from private sources. At that point the International Financial Society was formed--just six weeks after Watkin’s meeting with the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was capitalized at 3 million pounds—divided into 150,000 shares—all of which were bought by the important London banking firms. The sale of stock was closed in June 1863, and the new shareholders (the London banks) elected Sir Edmund Head as governor of the Company, with other board members being Richard Potter, Daniel Meinertzhagen, James S. Hodgson and J.H.W. Schroeder from the banks. Shares in the new company were then placed for sale on the open market. However, almost a year later, the society still owned a large block of stock. The Society’s minutes reflect that by 1867 it owned a mere 3,000 shares. Donald Smith (later Lord Strathcona) was hired in 1869 to run Hudson’s Bay with financing from the Bank of Montreal, headed at that time by his cousin and fellow Scot, George Stephen. Besides being chairman of the Bank of Montreal, Stephen was also the major shareholder in the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which was completed in 1886 after many near-bankruptcies. In the beginning of the construction of the railroad, Smith used Phillip Rose’s investment banking firm--Morton, Rose —to float issues of stocks and bonds. In the last two issues he was able to convince Barings Bank to assist him because the previous issues had not brought in any much-needed capital. According to the writers of Dope, Inc., by 1916 the Keswick family of Jardine Matheson had secured controlling interest of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and they made a deal with Sam and Abe Bronfman to buy the Canadian Pure Drug Company. The networks for smuggling of the drugs were established during the days of American prohibition. Drugs were brought to Canada from Asia via the railroad terminus on the Pacific Ocean. To hide the involvement of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, a dummy corporation, Transcanada Transport was set up. After a 1922 scandal airing the Bronfmans ’ crime connections in a public hearing, the family relocated their business to Montreal. Whereas they had previously imported whiskey from the Distillery Company of London (owned by "the higher echelons of the British nobility"), they transported a distillery from Kentucky to Montreal and were given distribution rights by the King. The Bronfmans then became a 50-50 partner with their previous supplier in a new holding company set up in 1926 in which William Ross of London was named as president, with Sam Bronfman as vice-president. Following another scandal involving Harry Bronfman, the family acquired a shipping subsidiary—Atlas Shipping Co.—which they moved to two islands on the Newfoundland coast, where their smuggling operations thereafter were based. The interlocking management among Hudson Bay, Seagrams, and the Canadian banks continued to overlap with the management of Lazard Brothers and British Intelligence operators. Between 1920-44 a partner and managing director of the London office of Lazard Brothers was Lord Robert H. Brand (named Baron Brand in 1946), who along with Lords Astor, Milner, Altrincham, and General Smuts made up the "Round Table Group," later called the "Cliveden Set," which controlled the Rhodes Trust, the Beit Trust, The Times of London and The Observer. Brand, regarded as the economist of the Round Table Group, was a director of Lloyd’s Bank and director of The Times. His wife was Nancy Astor’s sister, an American from the Langhorne family in Virginia. Brand was also financial advisor for Lord Robert Cecil. When Lord Brand left Lazard in 1944, his nephew Thomas Henry Brand replaced him. Notes and Sources: Cary Reich also mentions that management of Lazard Brothers was changed in 1965 from Kindersley to a man named Oliver Poole, who was removed in 1973. During that time the firm was advising P&O in a takeover attempt of Bovis. When he left, a member of the Kindersley family was re-installed as manager. John S. Galbraith, The Hudson’s Bay Company as an Imperial Factor, 1821-1869 (Berkeley and L.A.: University of California Press, 1957), p. 369. The International Financial Society of London was created in 1863 by Thomas Baring (Baring Brothers) and George Carr Glyn (of Glyn, Mills bank—a few years later the banker that represented British shareholders in transferring shares of the Erie Railroad to Heath & Raphael in New York. Dorothy R. Adler, British Investment in American Railways 1834-1898 (Charlottesville, Va.: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), p. 92. Galbraith, Hudson’s Bay Company, p. 390. W. G. Hardy, From Sea unto Sea: Canada--1850 to 1910, The Road to Nationhood (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co. 1960), p. 220. Morton, Rose in England (Morton, Bliss of New York), whose partners were Levi P. Morton (U.S. Ambassador to France and later Vice President. of United States), Sir John Rose (member of Macdonald-Cartier ministry in Canada), Pascoe DuPre Grenfell and George Bliss. Firm was later merged into Guaranty Trust of New York. Dorothy R. Adler, British Investment in American Railways 1834-1898 (Charlottesville, Va.: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), p. 90. Barings was strictly an English firm until 1891 when a New York firm comprised of a family member was established (Baring, Magoun & Co.) by Alexander Baring, formerly of Kennedy, Tod & Co. (NY) and George Magoun, formerly of Kidder, Peabody & Co. The English firm dealt with Baring & Magoun in New York and Kidder, Peabody in Boston. The Baring family had migrated to Exeter, England from Bremen, Germany in 1717, and their descendants, Alexander and Henry Baring, married Americans. Barings had been one of the first English firms to handle American railroad bonds, and had a long-standing relationship with the B&O Railroad in Maryland. Dorothy R. Adler, British Investment in American Railways 1834-1898 (Charlottesville, Va.: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), p. 144. Since 1963 Hudson’s Bay Company has been interlocked with the Canadian Corporate Management Corporation headed by Walter Lockhart Gordon of Canada’ s Liberal Party. Gordon was also chancellor of York University, which houses the North American center of "explicit Maoism" called the Norman Bethune Institute. Gordon and his accounting partner also created Rochdale College in Toronto, which in the early 1970s was the subject of newspaper headlines when Canadian police shut the college down because of the rampant illicit drug consumption and retail distribution at the campus. Gordon has been closely connected with the Canadian Pacific Co., which is interlocked three ways with Seagrams and with the five major Canadian banks--the Bank of Montreal, the Royal Bank of Canada, the Bank of Nova Scotia, the Toronto Dominion Bank, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: The Macmillan Company, 19 ), p. 581. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden (New York: Focus, Inc., 1981), pp. 59-60. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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