The South Sea Company

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This article is about the 18th century economic bubble and the company at its heart. For the Noel Coward play, see South Sea Bubble (play).
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Hogarthian image of the South Sea Bubble by Edward Matthew Ward, Tate Gallery
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Hogarthian image of the South Sea Bubble by Edward Matthew Ward, Tate Gallery

The South Sea Company (1711 - c1850s).was an English company granted a monopoly to trade with South America under a treaty with Spain. Following the The South Sea Company Act 1720, it became better known for the "South Sea Bubble", an economic bubble that occurred through overheated speculation in the company shares . The price collapsed after reaching a peak in September 1720.

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[edit] Initial stages

The company, formed in 1711 by Robert Harley, was granted exclusive trading rights in Spanish South America. The trading rights were pre-supposed on the successful conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, which did not end until 1713, and the actual granted treaty rights were not as comprehensive as Harley had originally hoped.

In return for these exclusive trading rights the government saw an opportunity for a profitable tradeoff. The government and the company convinced the holders of around £10 million of short-term government debt to exchange it with a new issue of stock in the company. To further spice up the transaction, the savvy dealers underwriting this transaction placed a perpetual annuity from the government paying 576,534 pounds annually on the company's books, or if you will, a perpetual loan of £10 million paying 6% to the company from the government. This guaranteed the new equity owners a steady stream of earnings to this new venture.

The company did not undertake a trading voyage to South America until 1717 and made little actual profit. Furthermore, when ties between Spain and Britain deteriorated in 1718 the short-term prospects of the company were very poor. Nonetheless, the company continued to argue that its longer-term future would be extremely profitable. In 1717 the company took on a further £2 million of public debt.

[edit] Debt for equity explained

The rationale in all these transactions was:

To the

  • government: lower interest rate on its debt
  • South Sea Company (owners): a steady stream of earnings financed by equity dilution
  • government debt holder: upside potential in a promising enterprise

[edit] Slave trading

While most commentary on the South Sea Company focuses on the money lost by wealthy English investors, it is often forgotten that the primary trading business of the company was abducting people from West Africa to the Americas and then selling them into slavery. In fact, the most important aspect of the company's monopoly trading rights to the Spanish empire was the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht's slave trading 'Asiento' which granted the exclusive right to sell abducted African people into slavery in all of Spain's American colonies.

The Asiento set a quota of abducting 4800 people a year into slavery. Despite its problems with speculation, the South Sea Company was relatively successful in this task (it was unusual for other, similarly chartered companies to fulfill their quotas). According to records compiled by David Eltis et al, during the course of 96 voyages in twenty-five years, 34,000 people were abducted of whom 30,000 survived the voyages across the Atlantic. Therefore, 4,000 people died during their abduction by the South Sea Company.

The mortality rate of about 15 percent was not unusual and indicates that the organization was not only strongly interested, but also relatively competent as a slave trader. Employees, directors and investors overcame major obstacles in order to pursue the slave trade, including two wars with Spain and the 1720 bubble. Indeed, the company's most successful slave trading year was in 1725, five years after the bubble burst.

[edit] Trading more debt for equity

In 1719 the company proposed a scheme by which it would buy more than half the national debt of Britain (£30,981,712), again with new shares, and a promise to the government that the debt would be converted to a lower interest rate, 5% until 1727 and 4% per year thereafter.

The purpose of this conversion was similar to the old one, it would allow a conversion of high interest, but difficult to trade debt, into low interest, readily marketable debt/shares of the South Sea Company. All parties could gain.

For a clarification of the situation the total government debt in 1719 was £50 million:

  • £18.3m was held by three large corporations:
  • Privately held redeemable debt amounted to £16.5m.
  • £15m consisted of irredeemable annuities, long fixed-term annuities of 72-87 years and short annuities of 22 years remaining maturity.

The Bank of England proposed a similar competing offer, which did not prevail when the South Sea raised its bid to £7.5m (plus approximately £1.3m in bribes). The proposal was accepted in a slightly altered form in April 1720. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Aislabie, was a strong supporter of the scheme.

Crucial in this conversion was the proportion of holders of irredeemable annuities that could be tempted to convert their securities at a high price for the new shares. (Holders of redeemable debt had effectively no other choice but to subscribe.) The South Sea Company could set the conversion price but could obviously not diverge a lot from the market price of its shares.

The company ultimately acquired 85% of the redeemables and 80% of the irredeemables.

[edit] Buoying the share price

The South Sea share
Enlarge
The South Sea share

The company then set to talking up its stock with "the most extravagant rumours" of the value of its potential trade in the New World which was followed by a wave of "speculating frenzy". The share price had risen from the time the scheme was proposed: from £128 in January 1720, to £175 in February, £330 in March and, following the scheme's acceptance, to £550 at the end of May.

What may have supported the company's high multiples (its P/E ratio) was a fund of credit (known to the market) of £70 million available for commercial expansion which had been made available through substantial support, apparently, by Parliament and the King.

Shares in the company were "sold" to politicians at the current market price; however, rather than paying for the shares, these lucky recipients simply held on to what shares they had been offered, "sold" them back to the company when and as they chose, and received as ‘profit’ the increase in market price. This method, while winning over the heads of government, the King's mistress, etc., also had the advantage of binding their interests to the interests of the Company: in order to secure their own profits, they had to help drive up the stock. Meanwhile, by publicizing the names of their elite stockholders, the Company managed to clothe itself in an aura of legitimacy, which attracted and kept other buyers.

[edit] Bubble Act

A number of other joint-stock companies then joined the market, making usually fraudulent claims about other foreign ventures or bizarre schemes, and were nicknamed "bubbles".

In June, 1720, the Bubble Act (repealed in 1825) required all joint-stock companies to have a Royal Charter. The South Seas Company held a charter providing exclusive access to all of Middle and South America. However, the areas in question were Spanish colonies, and England was then at war with Spain. Even once a peace treaty had been signed, relations between the two countries were not good. The best terms that the South Sea Company was able to obtain allowed them to send only one ship per year to Spain’s American colonies (not one ship per colony; exactly one ship), carrying a cargo of not more than 500 tons. Additional wrangling won the company the right to transport slaves, although steep import duties made the slave trade entirely unprofitable.

The grant of a charter to the South Sea Company was an added boost, its shares leaping to £890 in early June. This peak encouraged people to start to sell; to counterbalance this the company's directors ordered their agents to buy, which succeeded in propping the price up at around £750.

[edit] Top reached

The price of the stock went up over the course of a single year from one hundred pounds a share to over one thousand pounds per share. Its success caused a country-wide frenzy as citizens of all stripes – from peasants to lords – developed a feverish interest in investing; in South Seas primarily, but in stocks generally. Among the many companies, more or less legitimate, to go public in 1720 is – famously – one that advertised itself as "a company for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is". Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds; John Mackay Harriman House Classics 2003. P. 65 & 71.

The price finally reached £1,000 in early August and the level of selling was such that the price started to fall, dropping back to one hundred pounds per share before the year was out, and triggering bankruptcies amongst those who had bought on credit and increased selling, even "short selling" (selling borrowed shares for a profit if the price falls).

Also, in August 1720 the first of the installment payments of the first and second money subscriptions on new issues of South Sea stock were due. Earlier in the year Blunt had come up with a brilliant idea to prop up the share price — the company would lend people money to buy its shares. As a result a lot of shareholders could not pay for their shares other than by selling them.

Furthermore, the scramble for liquidity appeared internationally as "bubbles" were also ending in Amsterdam and Paris. The collapse coincided with the fall of the Mississippi Scheme of John Law in France. As a result, the price of South Sea shares began to decline.

By the end of September the stock had fallen to £150. The company failures now extended to banks and goldsmiths as they could not collect loans made on the stock, and thousands of individuals were ruined (including many members of the aristocracy). With investors outraged, Parliament was recalled in December and an investigation began. Reporting in 1721, it revealed widespread fraud amongst the company directors. The newly appointed First Lord of the Treasury Robert Walpole, who had argued against the scheme from the beginning, was forced to introduce a series of measures to restore public confidence.

[edit] Restructuring

The company continued its trade (when not interrupted by war) until the end of the Seven Years' War. However, its main function was always managing government debt, rather than trading with the Spanish colonies. The South Sea Company continued its management of the part of the National Debt until it was abolished in the 1850s.

[edit] Quotes on the bubble

  • "I can calculate the movement of the stars, but NOT the madness of men." — Sir Isaac Newton, after losing a fortune (£20,000) in the bubble.

[edit] Further reading

J. Carswell, The South Sea Bubble (Cresset Press, London 1960).

Virginia Cowles, The Great Swindle : The Story of the South Sea Bubble (First published 1960, reprinted by Hindsight Books in 2002 with a new introduction by Dr. Marc Faber).

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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