Union Insurance Society Of Canton
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Union Insurance Society Of Canton
The Union Insurance Society of Canton (commonly known as the Union) was a major Hong Kong-based insurance company regarded in the early 20th century as one of the four leading British businesses, or " hongs", of colonial Hong Kong alongside Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, Jardine Matheson and Swire. By 1953 Union was the leading Hong Kong Insurance company, with assets of £14.4m, over five times that of the nearest local rival, Canton Insurance. In 1967 the Union was acquired by the Guardian Assurance Company which was itself acquired by Axa in 1999. Notable employees and directors of the Union included William Keswick, William Shenton, Arthur William Hughes, A. O. Lang, Stanley Hudson Dodwell, Percy Hobson Holyoak and John Owen Hughes. History The Union was founded in 1835 by Dent & Co to provide insurance for commercial cargoes in Canton following expiry of the East India Company monopoly over trade. Original subscribers are believed to have also included Jardine, Matheson & C ...
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Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta in South China. With 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Hong Kong is also a major global financial centre and one of the most developed cities in the world. Hong Kong was established as a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island from Xin'an County at the end of the First Opium War in 1841 then again in 1842.. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898... British Hong Kong was occupied by Imperial Japan from 1941 to 1945 during World War II; British administration resume ...
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East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world. The EIC had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three Presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time. The operations of the company had a profound effect on the global balance of trade, almost single-handedly reversing the trend of eastward drain of Western bullion, seen since Roman times. Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade duri ...
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Trading Companies Of Hong Kong
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct exchange of goods and services for other goods and services, i.e. trading things without the use of money. Modern traders generally negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money. As a result, buying can be separated from selling, or earning. The invention of money (and letter of credit, paper money, and non-physical money) greatly simplified and promoted trade. Trade between two traders is called bilateral trade, while trade involving more than two traders is called multilateral trade. In one modern view, trade exists due to specialization and the division of labour, a predominant form of economic activity in which individuals and groups concentrate on a small aspect of production, but use their output in trades for other products a ...
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Financial Services Companies Established In 1835
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of financial economics bridges the two). Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance. In a financial system, assets are bought, sold, or traded as financial instruments, such as currencies, loans, bonds, shares, stocks, options, futures, etc. Assets can also be banked, invested, and insured to maximize value and minimize loss. In practice, risks are always present in any financial action and entities. A broad range of subfields within finance exist due to its wide scope. Asset, money, risk and investment management aim to maximize value and minimize volatility. Financial analysis is viability, stability, and profitability assessment ...
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Chater House
Chater House () is an office tower in Central, Hong Kong. Opened in March 2003, it is a part of the Hongkong Land portfolio of properties. It has a three-level retail podium, known as Landmark Chater. The building was built on the site of the former Swire House, and was named after Sir Paul Chater. The building faces streets on three sides: Chater Road, Pedder Street and Connaught Road Central. Plot history There were three buildings on the site between 1905 and 1958, namely Mansions Building (Hotel Mansions, later renamed Union Building), King's Building and York Building. Union Building Following the Praya reclamation of 1890–1904, a building was constructed and opened in 1905, that served as offices of Canadian Pacific Ocean Services (G/F) and Hong Kong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company (1/F). This building was acquired in 1921, and used as its headquarters by the Union Insurance Society of Canton Ltd., and then became known as Union Building (). It was bought by Th ...
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Christchurch
Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / Ōtākaro flows through the centre of the city, with an urban park along its banks. The city's territorial authority population is people, and includes a number of smaller urban areas as well as rural areas. The population of the urban area is people. Christchurch is the second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand, after Auckland. It is the major urban area of an emerging sub-region known informally as Greater Christchurch. Notable smaller urban areas within this sub-region include Rangiora and Kaiapoi in Waimakariri District, north of the Waimakariri River, and Rolleston and Lincoln in Selwyn District to the south. The first inhabitants migrated to the area sometime between 1000 and 1250 AD. They hunted moa, which led ...
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Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metro area, and is the administrative centre of the Wellington Region. It is the world's southernmost capital of a sovereign state. Wellington features a temperate maritime climate, and is the world's windiest city by average wind speed. Legends recount that Kupe discovered and explored the region in about the 10th century, with initial settlement by Māori iwi such as Rangitāne and Muaūpoko. The disruptions of the Musket Wars led to them being overwhelmed by northern iwi such as Te Āti Awa by the early 19th century. Wellington's current form was originally designed by Captain William Mein Smith, the first Surveyor General for Edward Wakefield's New Zealand Company, in 1840. The Wellington urban area, which only includes urbanised ar ...
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Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by population, fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region—the area governed by Auckland Council—which includes outlying rural areas and the islands of the Hauraki Gulf, and which has a total population of . While European New Zealanders, Europeans continue to make up the plurality of Auckland's population, the city became multicultural and Cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan in the late-20th century, with Asian New Zealanders, Asians accounting for 31% of the city's population in 2018. Auckland has the fourth largest Foreign born, foreign-born population in the world, with 39% of its residents born overseas. With its large population of Pasifika New Zealanders, the city is ...
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Charles Montague Ede
Charles Montague Ede, JP (7 October 1864 – 22 May 1925) was a Hong Kong businessman and unofficial member of the Executive Council and Legislative Council of Hong Kong. Business career Ede was born at Constantinople in a Cornish family. He joined the Union Insurance Society of Canton in March 1884 where his uncle N. J. Ede was the secretary for many years and then the manager of the company. He worked for the insurance company for 40 years and was manager of the Shanghai branch and had also stationed in North China and Yokohama. He became the general manager of the company in 1908 in succession to W. J. Saunders. Under his leadership, the Union Insurance Society of Canton expanded as a global insurance company, opened up new branches at Tokyo, Hankow, Tientsin, Scurabaya, Bombay, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Vancouver, Toronto, Buenos Ayres, Cario and Johannesburg and numerous other agencies. The company merged with the North China ...
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Demutualization
Demutualization is the process by which a customer-owned mutual organization (''mutual'') or co-operative changes legal form to a joint stock company. It is sometimes called stocking or privatization. As part of the demutualization process, members of a mutual usually receive a "windfall" payout, in the form of shares in the successor company, a cash payment, or a mixture of both. Mutualization or mutualisation is the opposite process, wherein a shareholder-owned company is converted into a mutual organization, typically through takeover by an existing mutual organization. Furthermore, re-mutualization depicts the process of aligning or refreshing the interest and objectives of the members of the mutual society. The mutual traditionally raises capital from its customer members in order to provide services to them (for example building societies, where members' savings enable the provision of mortgages to members). It redistributes some profits to its members. By contrast, a joint ...
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Russell & Company
Russell & Company () was the largest American trading house of the mid-19th century in China. The firm specialised in trading tea, silk and opium and was eventually involved in the shipping trade. Foundation In 1818, Samuel Russell was approached by Providence merchants Edward C. Carrington, Cyrus Butler and Benjamin and Thomas Hoppin to be an employee of their new resident commission firm in Canton (now referred to as Guangzhou) under the name of Samuel Russell & Company. The contract would expire after five years and the profit accumulated would be split between all parties. Russell arrived in Canton in 1819 and established Samuel Russell & Co. By 1820 the company was experiencing financial difficulties as a result of an economic depression, the Panic of 1819, which lasted until the mid-1820s. Due to these circumstances, Butler and Carrington left Samuel Russell & Co. in 1823 whilst the Hoppin brothers and Russell continued to do business in Canton. After the five-year contract e ...
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History Of Jardine, Matheson & Co
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as well as its usefulness to give perspective on the problems of the p ...
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