406
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
Thirdly,
Selection Trust formed, in the course of 1926, a third
venture—'Minerahzed Venture'. This venture was, indeed, a most
important one: it gave the right to prospect the balance of the N'Kana
Concession (which had originally been transferred from C.V. Limited to
Bwana M'Kubwa) with the further right to retain 150,000 acres: Bwana
M'Kubwa having a one-third residual interest in any subse-quential
development. In January 1927, Anglo American Corporation was informed
by its London office that it had been offered, and accepted, a 7-1/2
per cent participation in this venture. The most valuable outcome was
the Mufulira Mine.
Finally,
on 22 May 1928 Chester Beatty registered the Rhodesian Selection Trust.
Though Edmund Davis and others had already informed Ernest Oppenheimer
of his intentions, it was on that date that Anglo American Corporation
in London was informed, under a letter captioned Mineralized Venture,
of the formation of the new company 'to turn to account all the
interests of this venture, the chief of which is exclusive prospecting
rights over the major portion of the N'Kana Concession situate in
Northern Rhodesia . . .'. The letter continued,
Your
interest in the venture is 10 per cent so you will therefore be
entitled to an allotment of 120,000 fully paid shares . . . and the
right to subscribe for 40,000 shares of 55. each at par. . . . Should
you exercise in full your right to subscribe, this, together with the
vendor's shares, will give you a holding of 160,000 shares in the total
issued capital of .£500,000 of the company.
The
resulting situation was thus that the Anglo American Corporation
interests and the Chester Beatty interests both had a foot in the
opposite camp. In the light of the large amounts of money which would
clearly be involved in opening up the mines, and the difficult
metallurgical and geological problems which had still to be overcome,
it might have been expected that a move towards amalgamation would be
the next step. But considerable difficulties stood in the way. There
were differences of opinion among the experts—as the controversy over
the formation of the Rhokana Corporation was to show within a very
short time—this was as much a consulting engineers' 'war' as a conflict
between different financial groups. Secondly, at that stage of
development, it would have been virtually impossible accurately to
evaluate the worth of the various properties: a proper accounting basis
was still lacking. Thirdly, the Chester Beatty interests were already
closely associated with United States interests, in particular with the
Lehman Corporation
