404
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
a
considerable increase of capital, in which Anglo American Corporation
and the British South Africa Company greatly participated. Anglo
American Corporation remained not only consulting engineers to the new
company and to any new company which might be floated off but was also
to be the general managers of the parent company and all subsidiary
companies, with administrative headquarters at Broken Hill. Moreover,
Anglo American Corporation was to be the Johannesburg secretaries, and
the London office of the corporation was to be the London transfer
office for the parent company and any subsidiaries. The beginnings of
the relations connoted by the group system were implicit in these
arrangements: the group system was to appear within a short time.
♦ VII ♦
While
Anglo American Corporation was thus building up scientific and
managerial relations in Northern Rhodesia, not only with copper mining
and exploring companies, but with the lead, zinc and vanadium
enterprise at Broken Hill, another—to some extent a competitive, to
some degree a co-operative—but distinct unit of organization was
beginning to appear. Though Copper Ventures Limited had disposed of its
N'Kana Concession to the Bwana M'Kubwa company, and though that
syndicate itself was liquidated in 1925, Chester Beatty continued to be
on the boards of R.C.B.C. and the Bwana M'Kubwa company. Nor had he in
any way decided to limit the extent of his interests; on the contrary
on 20 August 1925, Leslie Pollak, then in London, was writing to Ernest
Oppenheimer that J. S. Wetzlar and himself had been lunching with
Chester Beatty and that
...
he regards copper prospects as good and for this reason says he is
anxious to get hold of and develop right away a copper property. He
considers that Bwana with its own and the N'Kana Mine has as much hay
on its fork as it can handle while the development of the Border
Concession will still take a good time, and as he wants to act quickly
he propounds the following: that a syndicate consisting of himself
(1/3) A.A.C. (1/3) and an American group (1/3) of the best credentials
and with whom he is in touch, should secure options on two or three
promising areas from certain properties such as the Gold Fields
Concession, Congo Border, etc.; that the funds of the syndicate be used
to prospect these areas and to take up the most promising one, assuming
of course it is sufficiently attractive. Then a company should be
floated to take over, develop and produce. J.S.W.
