Managing agency business groups, elite directors, and the rubber boom, 1897–1913
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19214166 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Higgins (0000-0001-8136-6466, Newcastle University), Steven Toms (0000-0002-6147-7828, University of Leeds, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ehr.70121 |
| OpenAlex | W7161145873 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 32 |
We identify a new organizational form, the Managing Agency Business Group (MABG), demonstrating how agency houses used interlocking directorships to build groups on the basis of commercial and plantation expertise to access finance on London stock markets and local capital markets in the pre‐1914 rubber boom. MABG boards combined managerial and commercial expertise with access to financial resources. Such features, rather than membership of elite groups, effectively signalled new issue quality and explained the composition of board membership in the rubber industry, which represented a substantial proportion of initial public offerings in the decade before the First World War. The MABGs used a serial finance model, through which influential intermediaries embedded in commercial networks created managerial capacity in individual estates, which were then merged with other estates, floated on the stock market, consolidated into groups, and their returns securitized through the creation of investment trusts
Agency (philosophy) · Capital (architecture) · Capital market · Elite · Intermediary · Quality (philosophy) · Stock (firearms) · Australian History and Society · Elite Sociology and Global Capitalism · Historical Economic and Social Studies
Using daily stock returns
Coase Revisited
Managing Agency Capitalism and Malayan Rubber
Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects
The Economic Growth of Singapore
British Imperialism
Pioneering Modern Corporate Governance
The Emergence of an Export Cluster
Avoiding Negligence and Profusion
The first global emerging markets investor
Regulating IPOs
Merchants as Business Groups
The Papar Land Protest, 1910–11
Investment in the Rubber Industry in Malaya c. 1900–1922
The British Agency Houses in Malaysia
Accessing capital markets
The Growth and Relative Decline of the North British Rubber Co., 1856–1956
Global trading companies in the commodity chain of rubber between 1890 and the 1920s
British IPO directors, 1891–1911
Propositions put forward by quite honest men’
The Economic Benefits of Political Connections in Late Victorian Britain
Elite directors, London finance, and British overseas expansion
An efficient market? Going public in London, 1891-1911
The Financing of Malayan Rubber, 1905-1923
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |