This book, first published in 1879 and reissued by Garland in 1984, analyses through the evidence from the original trial the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank in 1878, and the reasons behind it. A history of gross mismanagement had been concealed by the directors by deceits facilitated by the absence of an independent audit.
Lord Rodger of Earlsferry was a distinguished judge and scholar. He was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the author of many high quality law journal articles and two books. Written in memory of Lord Rodger, this collection contains 47 essays by Lord Rodger's friends and colleagues from the UK and Europe. The essays reflect Lord Rodger's role as a leading judge and also his wide-ranging academic interests including Roman law, Scots law and legal history, and a miscellany of other topics. The authors in this volume are leading academics or judges, and a particularly notable feature is the nine essays written by Supreme Court justices. As the highest judges in the UK they provide a unique insight into the work of the Supreme Court, as well as Lord Rodger's work in the Court. The book also includes the memorial tributes to Lord Rodger which explain his remarkable legal career, including his roles as Lord Advocate (Senior Law Officer of Scotland) Lord President of the Court of Session, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and, finally, Justice of the UK Supreme Court. The essays include personal reminiscences of Lord Rodger, helping the reader to understand why he was so highly regarded and why his untimely death has dealt such a devastating blow to law in the UK.
This collection of reported British shareholder meetings originally published between 1800 and 1920 provides scholars and students new insight into the development of big businesses in the world today. Although such meetings comprised only one of many facets of companies’ intersections with their publics during the nineteenth century, they regularly provide a rich insight into each industry. This collection offers a breadth of examples, including utilities, land companies, and theatres as well as mining, insurance, banking, and transport, to allow readers to gain a sense of the protean nature of incorporation during the long nineteenth century. Following a general introduction, the book is divided into four sections: Doing the Business (on day-to-day financial operations), Politics (on corporate activities than intersected with British political and imperial concerns), Failure (on the communication and reception of financial ruin), and Mergers and Acquisitions (on shareholders’ responses to proposed mergers). Short introductions to each document provides the necessary information about each company and its constituents. This title will be of great interest to students of History, Business, and Finance.
The recent global financial crisis has been characterised as a turning point in the way we respond to financial crime. Focusing on this change and ‘crime in the commercial sphere’, this text considers the legal and economic dimensions of financial crime and its significance in societal consciousness in twenty-first century Britain. Considering how strongly criminal enforcement specifically features in identifying the post-crisis years as a ‘turning point’, it argues that nineteenth-century encounters with financial crime were transformative for contemporary British societal perceptions of ‘crime’ and its perpetrators, and have lasting resonance for legal responses and societal reactions today. The analysis in this text focuses primarily on how Victorian society perceived and responded to crime and its perpetrators, with its reactions to financial crime specifically couched within this. It is proposed that examining how financial misconduct became recognised as crime during Victorian times makes this an important contribution to nineteenth-century history. Beyond this, the analysis underlines that a historical perspective is essential for comprehending current issues raised by the ‘fight’ against financial crime, represented and analysed in law and criminology as matters of enormous intellectual and practical significance, even helping to illuminate the benefits and potential pitfalls which can be encountered in current moves for extending the reach of criminal liability for financial misconduct. Sarah Wilson’s text on this highly topical issue will be essential reading for criminologists, legal scholars and historians alike. It will also be of great interest to the general reader. The Origins of Modern Financial Crime was short-listed for the Wadsworth Prize 2015.
In 1850 the Industrial Revolution came to an end. In 1851 the Great Exhibition illustrated to the whole world the supremacy of industrial England. For the next twenty years Britain reigned supreme. From around 1870 Britain began to decline. Britain is now a second rate power with strong memories of its former supremacy. The above five sentences summarise a common view of the sequencing of Britain’s rise and relative fall, a stereotype that is challenged and modified in the essays of The Golden Age. By concentrating on central aspects of social and industrial change authors expose the underpinnings of supremacy, its unsung underside, its tarnished gold. Major themes cover industrial and technological change, social institutions and gender relations in a period during which industry and industrialism were equally celebrated and nurtured. Against this background it is difficult to argue for any sudden decline of energy, assets or institution, nor for any significant move from an industrial society to one in which a hearty manufacturing was replaced by commerce and land, sensibility and artifice.
