Selection Trust was a British mining finance house. It was started in 1913 by
A. Chester Beatty, a
mining engineer
Mining in the engineering discipline is the extraction of minerals from underneath, open pit, above or on the ground. Mining engineering is associated with many other disciplines, such as mineral processing, exploration, excavation, geology, and ...
from the United States. After the end of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, Beatty built up a substantial portfolio of mining interests, many of them in Africa, but others in Serbia and in Siberia. Initially the company began operations by sharing an office at Number One London Wall in the City of
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
with the consulting firm of
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...
, a fellow American mining engineer.
The company was chiefly known for its investments in mining for base metals, diamonds and oil. The countries in which it operated included the US, Canada, Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Burma, Australia, South Africa, Angola, Tanzania, Northern Rhodesia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, French Guinea, Botswana, Hungary, Russia, Yugoslavia and the USSR. It was pioneer in the early days of the North Sea oil and gasfields.
Structure
Mining finance houses were principally holding companies that create subsidiaries in which they either partly or wholly owned the capital of the mining companies in the group, but mostly maintained control. Many of these subsidiaries were listed on the same as the master company or on other stock exchanges. In the case of Selection Trust, many of these entities were clearly group companies due to their naming. Examples of this were Consolidated African Selection Trust,
Rhodesian Selection Trust The Rhodesian Selection Trust (RST) was a mining corporation which produced copper from the Copperbelt region of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia.
History
The RST was formed in 1928 by Alfred Chester Beatty, an Irish-American mining magnate, as a hol ...
, Gold Coast Selection Trust and
Sierra Leone Selection Trust
The Sierra Leone Selection Trust was formed in 1934 following an agreement between the government of British Sierra Leone and the Consolidated African Selection Trust Ltd (CAST). CAST was formed in 1924 and was part of a much larger mining finance ...
.
Rhodesian Selection Trust
One of the key early building blocks of the mining finance house was its interests in the copper belt of Central Africa. The Rhodesian Selection Trust Limited (RST) was a copper mining corporation which operated in the
Copperbelt
The Copperbelt () is a natural region in Central Africa which sits on the border region between northern Zambia and the southern Democratic Republic of Congo. It is known for copper mining.
Traditionally, the term ''Copperbelt'' includes the ...
region of Northern Rhodesia. In 1926, RST took over the
Roan Antelope and Rietbok claims from the Bwana Mkubwa Company and the Rhodesia Copper and General Exploration and Finance Company, with the RST dominating the company shareholdings.
Rhodesian Selection Trust was formed in 1928. The company was renamed Roan Selection Trust in 1964 after the break-up of the
Central African Federation
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known a ...
and the independence of Northern Rhodesia as the new state of
Zambia
Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...
.
Other Ventures
in the USSR
One of the company's least successful ventures was a partnership with
Calouste Gulbenkian
Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian (, Western hy, Գալուստ Կիւլպէնկեան; 23 March 1869 – 20 July 1955), nicknamed "Mr Five Per Cent", was a British-Armenian businessman and philanthropist. He played a major role in making the petrole ...
in which the new
Leninist
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishm ...
regime of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
awarded the Lena Goldfields and the Tetiuhe Mining Company to the partners. Faction fighting with the USSR ultimately made operations impossible.
in Serbia
A more successful between-the-wars venture was the development of the
Trepča Mines
The Trepča Mines ( al, Miniera e Trepçës, sr, Рудник Трепча / ''Rudnik Trepča'') is a large industrial complex in Kosovo, located northeast of Mitrovica. The mine is located on the southern slopes of the Kopaonik mountain, be ...
in Kosovo while in Yugoslavia. In 1925 an exploration program was launched to assess the potential of the Lead-Zinc deposit at the location. The 50-year concession was obtained in 1926 by Selection Trust from Rade Pašić, son of
Nikola Pašić
Nikola Pašić ( sr-Cyrl, Никола Пашић, ; 18 December 1845 – 10 December 1926) was a Serbian and Yugoslav politician and diplomat who was a leading political figure for almost 40 years. He was the leader of the People's Radical ...
, Yugoslav prime minister until the same year.
On 9 September 1927 Selection Trust launched its Trepča Mines Limited subsidiary in London. Mining operations began in 1930 with pilot production of sulphide Lead and Zinc mineralisations. The mine was appropriated by the Germans upon their invasion of Yugoslavia and Trepča at one point was supplying 40% of all the Lead required for the German war effort.
in Australia
With decolonialisation in Africa advancing rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, the company increased its presence in Australia. One of its major successes was its involvement in the early phases of the country's iron ore expansion through the Mt Newman discovery. The company became even more prominent from the late 1960s for its involvement in the
Nickel
Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow ...
Boom. Rising world nickel prices and a prolonged strike at an Inco's
Creighton Mine
Creighton Mine is an underground nickel, copper, and platinum-group elements (PGE) mine. It is presently owned and operated by Vale Limited (formerly known as INCO) in the city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Open pit mining began in 1901, ...
nickel mine at
Sudbury, Ontario
Sudbury, officially the City of Greater Sudbury is the largest city in Northern Ontario by population, with a population of 166,004 at the 2021 Canadian Census. By land area, it is the largest in Ontario and the fifth largest in Canada. It is a ...
meant that the discoveries were rapidly developed, bringing about a frenzied market in nickel explorers and developers between 1967 and 1971. The boom was triggered by the discovery of significant nickel resources in
Kambalda, Western Australia
Kambalda is a small mining town about from the mining city of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, within the Goldfields. It is split into two townsites apart, Kambalda East and Kambalda West; and is located on the western edge of a giant salt la ...
in 1966,
Mount Windarra in 1969 and
Agnew (by Selection Trust and its satellite, Consolidated African Selection Trust) in 1971.
It was noticeable that Agnew was initially largely in the hands of London investors and that the sole Australian connection was an indirect 2.4% stake in the project held by Selcast Exploration, a locally listed satellite of Selection Trust. This imbalance was partly remedied by
Mount Isa Mines
Mount Isa Mines Limited ("MIM") operates the Mount Isa copper, lead, zinc and silver mines near Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia as part of the Glencore group of companies. For a brief period in 1980, MIM was Australia's largest company. It has ...
buying into the control group of the project.
Succession & Acquisition by BP
In 1950, Chester Beatty handed control of Selection Trust over to his son, also named Alfred Chester Beatty, who ran it until 1968. It was acquired by
BP in August 1980, and named successively, BP Minerals International Ltd and BP Minerals Development Ltd. The acquisition by BP was the largest takeover in the history of the
London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St P ...
at the time. Most of BP's minerals assets were sold to the British mining company
Rio Tinto Zinc
Rio Tinto Group is an Anglo-Australian multinational company that is the world's second-largest metals and mining corporation (behind BHP). The company was founded in 1873 when of a group of investors purchased a mine complex on the Rio Tinto, ...
for £2.38 billion in 1989.
References
External links
Catalogue of the Selection Trust papersat th
of the
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...
.
* {{PM20, FID=co/055363, TEXT=Documents and clippings about, NAME=Consolidated African Selection Trust Ltd
Financial services companies established in 1913
British companies established in 1913
Mining companies
Defunct mining companies
Lead mining companies
Nickel mining companies
Multinational companies
Diamond mining companies
Mining companies of Australia
Mining companies of the United Kingdom
Multinational oil companies
Oil and gas companies of the United Kingdom
Non-renewable resource companies established in 1913
Multinational companies headquartered in the United Kingdom