South Sea Company | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2019-01-02

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company


00:03:04 1 Foundation
00:06:55 1.1 Conception of the Company
00:10:21 1.2 Flotation
00:13:40 1.3 The slave trade
00:16:34 1.4 Changes of management
00:20:13 1.5 War
00:20:46 2 Refinancing government debt
00:23:17 2.1 Trading more debt for equity
00:27:55 2.1.1 Public announcement
00:31:09 2.2 Inflating the share price
00:33:00 2.3 Bubble Act
00:36:56 2.4 Top reached
00:38:57 2.5 Recriminations
00:41:17 2.6 Quotations prompted by the collapse
00:42:06 3 A trading company
00:46:17 3.1 Slave trade under the Asiento
00:49:19 3.2 The annual ship
00:51:30 3.3 Arctic whaling
00:54:35 4 Government debt after the Seven Years' War
00:55:27 5 Armorials
00:56:19 6 Officers of the South Sea Company
00:56:43 7 In fiction
00:57:54 8 See also



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SUMMARY
=======
The South Sea Company (officially The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America, and for the encouragement of fishing) was a British joint-stock company founded in 1711, created as a public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of national debt. The company was also granted a monopoly to trade with South America and nearby islands, hence its name (the modern use of the term "South Seas" to refer to the entire South Pacific was unknown in England at the time). When the company was created, Britain was involved in the War of the Spanish Succession and Spain controlled South America. There was no realistic prospect that trade would take place, and the company never realised any significant profit from its monopoly. Company stock rose greatly in value as it expanded its operations dealing in government debt, peaking in 1720 before collapsing to little above its original flotation price; the economic bubble became known as the South Sea Bubble.
The Bubble Act 1720 (6 Geo I, c 18), which forbade the creation of joint-stock companies without royal charter, was promoted by the South Sea company itself before its collapse.
In Great Britain, a considerable number of people were ruined by the share collapse, and the national economy greatly reduced as a result. The founders of the scheme engaged in insider trading, using their advance knowledge of when national debt was to be consolidated to make large profits from purchasing debt in advance. Huge bribes were given to politicians to support the Acts of Parliament necessary for the scheme. Company money was used to deal in its own shares, and selected individuals purchasing shares were given loans backed by those same shares to spend on purchasing more shares. The expectation of profits from trade with South America was used to encourage the public to purchase shares, but the bubble prices reached far beyond the profits of the slave trade.A parliamentary enquiry was held after the crash to discover its causes. A number of politicians were disgraced, and people found to have profited unlawfully from the company had assets confiscated proportionate to their gains (most had already been rich men and remained so). The company was restructured and continued to operate for more than a century after the Bubble. The headquarters were in Threadneedle Street at the centre of the financial district in London. At the time of these events the Bank of England also was a private company dealing in national debt, and the crash of its rival consolidated its position as banker to the British government..