English East India Company

The British East India Company (also known as Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies) was formed to share in the East Indian spice trade. The company serve as a trading body for English merchants, specifically to participate in the East Indian spice trade. It later added such items as cotton, silk, indigo, saltpeter, tea, and opium to its wares and also participated in the slave trade.

On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a royal charter to the “Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading with the East Indies,” soon thereafter known as the East India Company (EIC), which gave the merchants a monopoly on all trade east of the Cape of Good Hope for 15 years.

The charter listed the aims of the Company as the “pursuit of mercantile profit” and the “advancement of trade”.

The charter granted a monopoly of all English trade in all lands washed by the Indian Ocean (from the southern tip of Africa, to Indonesia in the South Pacific). Unauthorized (British) interlopers were liable to forfeiture of ships and cargo. The company was managed by a governor and 24 directors chosen from its stockholders.

The East India Company was a monopoly trading company that linked the Eastern and Western worlds. The company far outpaced its rivals by acquiring extraordinary wealth and power. In particular, in its pursuit of resources and goods in the Indian subcontinent, it preceded the British government as the ruler of large parts of India.

As its trade with the East grew, the EIC became the largest employer in London, with its own dockyards in London along the Thames River, as well as warehouses, foundries, rope works, sawmills, and even slaughterhouses where cattle were butchered to feed the EIC’s growing fleet of East Indiamen.

Trading with the East Indies not only allowed England to gain needed products, but also allowed them to learn how to manufacture these goods for themselves. In the beginning, the British were paying a lot of money for these products, because they did not have a choice. As time went on though, they were able to manufacture some of the products for a fraction of the cost at home.

In August 1765, the Company’s supremacy was formally recognised by the impoverished Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II with the grant of Bengal’s diwani. This office of state gave the Company control over tax collection for more than 10 million people. For a stock market-listed company with profit as its primary motive, this acquisition of a country’s public finances was truly revolutionary.

The company became involved in politics and acted as an agent of British imperialism in India from the early 18th century to the mid-19th century. In addition, the activities of the company in China in the 19th century served as a catalyst for the expansion of British influence there.

From the late 18th century, it gradually lost both commercial and political control. In 1873 it ceased to exist as a legal entity.
English East India Company

Mini Cooper in history

Mini, a British icon, was produced by British Motor Corporation (BMC) in 1959. During the Suez crisis and to confront the competition from other car manufacturers in 1956, Lord Leonard from BMC decided to seek help of a car designer and engineer, Sir Alec Issigonis.

In 1957, Alec Issigonis set up small, secretive, long term research department and it was there that the original Mini – ADO 15 – was born.

Original design work began in 1957 full approval for production on two sites – Longbridge (existing Austin plant) and Cowley (The Morris plant) – came in mid 1958, and the new Austin and Mini-badged 848 CC versions were launched simultaneously in August 1959.

The name Mini was sued for the first time in 1961. The debut of the sporty Cooper version in July 1961, developed by racer John Cooper, and its subsequent motorsports victories were major factors toward increasing interest in the mini.

In 1961, it was renamed Austin Mini, and eight years later in 1969 – ten years after the first Mini rolled off the production line - the Mini became a marquee on its own right.

When the classic Mini production stopped in 2000, BMW announced a Mini replacement.

Since its launch in 2001, BMW’s modern Mini has become the pinnacle of small yet funky family cars in the premium small car segment.
Mini Cooper in history

British Leyland Motor Corporation

Leyland, one of the country’s leading bus and truck manufacturers, expanded into the car business by pursuing the strategy, used by William Morris to build his motor empire in the 1930’s of purchasing financially troubled companies.

Since the Second World War, Leyland had been growing through acquisition. Its core business was in commercial vehicles. It had purchased Albion in 1951, Scammell in 1955, AEC, Thorneycroft, Park Royal and Charles Roe in 1962, Bristol Commercial Vehicles in 1965, and finally Aveling Barford in 1967.

In 1952, the British Motor Corporation (BMC) appeared as a result of merger between Austin and Morris. Soon BMC, joined forces with Jaguar to form British Motor Holdings.

All major British-owned brands were owned by Leyland and BMC. The government then encourages Leyland and BMC to merge, convinced that scale was essential for long term survival.

On January 1968 the formation of the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) was announced. BLMC became the only indigenously owned British producer of mass-maker cars and offered a wide range of niche market models, commercial vehicles, and nonautomotive products.

During the 1970s the Corporation was badly affected by an ageing product range, increasing foreign competition, indifferent management and very poor relations.

In 1975 British Leyland was effectively bankrupt and was saved from liquidation only by a state takeover.
British Leyland Motor Corporation

The Austin Motor Company

The Austin Motor Company was formed in the summer of 1905 as a private company under the ownership of Herbert Austin with an initial capitalization of £11,000. In November that year he moved his factory into the former premises of White and Pike printing works at Longbridge site near Birmingham.

Austin first displayed his cars in public in 1912 at the motor show, where he criticized the authorities for their lack of discrimination in favor of British manufacturers. In the first year of production the company produced 120 cars 1nd by 1939 it was producing over 75,000 cats at the Longbridge..

The most famous car produced by Austin Motor Company was The Austin Seven. It was unveiled in 1922, quickly became the best selling model in Great Britain and continued in production until 1939.

The company initially produced unprofitable cars in small numbers but for the first time registered a profit of £41,130 on turnover of more than £400,000 in 1913.

In 1952, Austin Motor Company merged with Morris Minor Limited to form new holding company British Motor Corporation. The government approved the merger a being in the public interest. It was expected to lower production costs through achieving economies of scale.
The Austin Motor Company

The Economist

The Economist is a prominent weekly newspaper well known among students of economics and financial affairs.

The Economist, one of the world’s foremost economic journals, was founded by James Wilson, a passionate believer in the socially improving effects of free trade. James Wilson was also a banker and politician originally addressed the concerns of business dealing in commodities, railroads, and other investments.

The journal was edited by his more famous son-in-law, Walter Bagehot, from 1860 to 1877, contained regular reports on the money market the stock market and the course of foreign trade.

James Wilson was its first editor and laid its foundations firmly on the classical economics of Adam Smith, Ricardo, James Mill and Tooke.

After his death Wilson’s six daughters retained severally or individually, a financial interest until the paper was taken over in 1938 by the maverick Tory MP Brendan Bracken.

The journal use of illustration other than business charts was minimal until the 1930s, but its department organization, broad scope and use of graphics is similar in the late 1980s to American news weeklies.

Today circulation is about 1.5 million (2012). Its coverage is thus international, with existence reporting on Europe, America and Asia as well as Britain.
The Economist

Business history of Reebok

Reebok originally began in 1895 when Joseph William Foster made a business of creating handmade running shoes in Bolton, England.

This dedicated company made thin leather shoes constructed of rigid leather to be worn By Lord Burghley in the 1924 Olympics.

A young and dedicated runner, he founded the company known as J.W Foster Company & Sons in 1939, produced custom-made cross-country spikes for a majority of England’s top runners.

Before long, Foster was building shoes for England’s elite runners, including Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell of Academy Award-winning Chariots of Fire fame.

In 1958, the grandson of Foster, Jeffrey and Joseph, left their grandfather’s business and conceived Reebok. The company’s name originated from a Dutch word that refers to a type of antelope or gazelle.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, reebok remained a medium sized sports shoes company acting on a national level with an annual sales volume of USD 1.5 million.

In 1979, American Paul Fireman negotiated the license for North American distribution; three years later Reebok came out with Freestyle, a women’s athletic shoe, to satisfy the fitness craze. It was developed to be worn in or out of the gym.

The Reebok USA soon evolved into a global player with Paul Fireman as CEO.

In 1985, Reebok USA acquired the British company Reebok and went public with its new name International.

Somewhere along the way Reebok had lost its voice. By the end of the 1990s, the traditionally strong Reebok had fallen to third place behind both Nike and Adidas.

Over the years, the J.W. Foster Company formed close relationships with local English running clubs and an athlete, subsequently forming the foundation for what is now Reebok International.

In 2005, Reebok became a subsidiary to German group Adidas, making it the number two brand, with Nike as number one.
Business history of Reebok

British Imperial Tobacco

The Imperial Tobacco Group PLC is the leading international tobacco company which manufactures, markets, distributes and sells a comprehensive range of cigarettes, tobaccos, cigars, rolling papers and tubes.

In 1890, James b. Duke of Durham, North Carolina merged the five largest tobacco companies in America to create the American Tobacco Company.

After having a monopoly on the American market, Duke went to England in 1901 and tried to take over the British tobacco market. In 1901 American Tobacco bought Ogden Ltd, one of the Britain’s leading tobacco manufacturers.

Duke’s purchase signaled his intentions not only of extending his operations beyond the American shore but also of capturing the market in Britain as well as Europe.

In response to this, thirteen English family-run tobacco companies formed together in December 1901 to create the Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain and Ireland Ltd.

This new formed company headed by W.D and H.O Wills Ltd. The Company's first Chairman was William Henry Wills of the Wills Company. A year later three more firms joined Imperial Tobacco.

In April 1902, it was announced that the Imperial Tobacco Company had entered North Carolina to start the tobacco war on Duke’s home territory.

The Imperial Tobacco was the dominant manufacturer in the United Kingdom market and was responsible for over one half of the total production in 1914.

Imperial Tobacco also owned tobacco plantations and shipment facilities in the United States. It had invested huge sums of money in marketing Virginia tobacco in Britain.

By 1939, 75 percent of the tobacco consumption in Britain was supplied by the Imperial Tobacco Company.
British Imperial Tobacco

Shell Company: The Early Stage

Shell Company: The Early Stage
Shell was born in the early days of the oil boom and started out in the shadow of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly, which was able to drive many emerging rival oil companies out of business by undercutting their price and taking over their shares of the market.

Royal Dutch/Shell was the result of a merger in 1907 between the British-based Shell Transport and Trading Company, which pioneered the use of seagoing oil tankers, and the Royal Dutch Petroleum company, which made its fortune developing and exploiting new oil fields in Borneo and Sumatra.

During the Civil War, when some of the slaves from Trepagnier Plantation were joining Union forces to fight the Confederacy in Louisiana, a British Jew from the East End of London was setting up as a merchant on the docks in that great city. Marcus Samuel was an enterprising fellow who decided to greet ships returning to England from India, Japan, Africa and the Middle east and offer to buy any trinkets and curious that sailors had collected abroad. Before long, word spread among sailors that they could augment their wages by selling to Samuel. With business thriving, Samuel opened large warehouses on the docks to collect these items and resell them. Among the items he purchased were exotic shells, which he had glued onto wooden jewelry boxes. Those boxes were sold to young women who came to the beach for a holiday.

His grandson later took his fortune and expanded import/export business, opening offices in Japan and London.

In the 1890s, the French Rothschild family decided to go into business exploiting the oil fields opening in Baku in Russia. Needing a partner to help them transport and sell the oil, they turned to Marcus Samuel.

In 1907, Sir Marcus Samuel and Henry Deterding merged the Shell Transport and Trading Company with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company to create Royal Dutch/Shell. Today Royal Dutch/Shell is the world second largest oil company. The company is 40 percent owned by Shell Transport and Trading Company and 60 percent owned by Royal Dutch Petroleum. Deterding then bought Shell ashore in the United States in Washington and Louisiana to take on Standard Oil on its home turf. John D. Rockefeller tried to buy out Royal Dutch/Shell with an offer of $100 million in 1910, but the deal was turn down.
Shell Company: The Early Stage