David Sassoon & Sons

"This triumvirate preferred to accept crushing personal burdens rather than delegate to strangers. Their meagre staff of warehouse clerks was recruited exclusively from ex-Baghdad Jews who would seldom be taken into private counsel. Many an ambitious employee, even when related to the family by marriage, would discover painfully that 'David Sassoon & Sons' meant precisely that. In policy and business routine, the young men reacted to their father and each other with almost a conditioned reflex. Physically, however, they had little in common except the hereditary mouth which turned down at the corners and often gave strangers an unfortunate impression of disdain."

"There were many larger and older-established China traders than David Sassoon & Sons, but none more flexible or so diversified. They became shippers without the risks of shipowning, and acted as brokers or bankers to smaller traders in need of capital. They also started up as commission agents, buying and selling cargoes for others who discovered that the Sassoon turnover guaranteed them excellent cargo space at reasonable freight rates. Above all, they were warehousemen with an interest in some of the choicest wharves in the Far East."