Elias Sassoon: Lone Hand Opportunist in Foreign Markets

“As expected, the quiet and secretive Elias was careful with his money and inclined to play a lone hand. Within a few years, he was able to pay over £2,000 for shares in the China Steam Navigation Company. He also snapped up sites on the Shanghai mud flats at agricultural prices, sometimes as low as £90 an acre. (It would soar to £300,000 an acre by the time his grandson, Sir Victor, came to develop the Bund!) He guessed that the port must grow, but was surprised by the influx of fifty thousand Chinese labourers who poured into the Settlement by 185 5, eager to work and escape vicious taxation by the warlords. Elias would be among the first to invest in the housing estates that soon sprawled over the Chinese city.”

“The first Sassoon had arrived in China in 1844. He was David's second son, Elias, who decided that Shanghai and Hong Kong offered by far the best prospects for opium and textiles. He had previously put up his sign in Canton and followed the example of Jardine, Matheson & Co. by financing shipments and giving small-scale merchant banking facilities to others, while sending his own goods up the coast.”