Haifa Diamond Company
| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Diamond mining |
| Fate | Diamond industry reorganized under Caputia by the Haifan Diamonds Corporation Act, 1663 |
| Successor(s) | Haifan Diamonds Corporation |
| Founded | 1602 AN |
| Headquarters | Abeis, Free State of Haifa |
| Key people |
|
| Products | Diamonds |
| Owner(s) | Passasian regional government (30 percent) |
The Haifa Diamond Company was the largest employer of the Free State of Haifa, the concern that worked the republic's diamond fields south of its capital at Abeis. Its shares were listed on the Ham50, the Hammish stock exchange, and from 1602 AN it was part-owned from outside the republic by the Passasian regional government led by Erlo Sinders.[1] Diamonds were the first pillar of the Free State's economy, and like the rest of Haifan commerce the company was bound to the institutions of Hamland.
The diamond fields
The fields lay south of Abeis, and Haifan tradition placed their first working in the years before the republic's documented history, under George Perlman, the second of its premiers by that tradition, when the proceeds of the mines were said to have turned an agricultural country toward commerce and built the banking houses of the capital.[2] The stones fed the cutting and jewelry houses of Abeis, whose trade in cut diamonds outlasted the republic and ran on under Caputia. At the founding of the republic in 1602 AN the company employed more Haifans than any other concern in the country.
Flotation and the Passasian stake
The company's shares were floated on the Ham50, the stock market of Hamland, on which Haifan firms were listed throughout the Free State period. Access to the exchange was among the reasons the republic's founder and first prime minister, Ismael Todochev, had pressed for Haifa's association with the Commonwealth, so that Haifan companies, and the Haifa Diamond Company in particular, could be listed.[3] The flotation opened at 2.40 obols a share.[1]
Soon after the flotation the Passasian regional government led by Erlo Sinders bought 30 percent of the company, about 98 obols' worth, and became its principal shareholder; the purchase lifted the shares to 2.61.[1] Sinders held the finance ministry of Hamland and governed the Wallis Islands, the wealthiest of the Free State's territories, whose settlement the diamond wealth of the Haifan fields had helped underwrite. The government he led bought up Haifan firms under the economic model he had authored, the framework around which the Hammish and Haifan economies were structured.[4] This was the dependence Benjamin Meir named on resigning the premiership in 1616 AN, when he said that Haifa had become, to some, a component of Hamland.[2]
Administration
Ismael Todochev held the post of chief advisor to the company as one of five offices he occupied at once, alongside the premiership, the principality of Walstadt, the chief executive's office at the Fenkel Shipping Co., and command of the army.[5] Its shares were priced in obols, Hamland's name for the credit shared through the Small Commonwealth Unified Economy, the banking system on which the Free State's economy rested; Haifa issued the same credit under its own name, the Lliev. Its principal shareholder outside the republic was the Passasian regional government.[4]
Later diamond trade
The Free State was dissolved in 1620 AN and reorganized as an autonomous territory of the Commonwealth, and Haifan companies went on trading through the Ham50 afterward.[3] Hammish administration disturbed neither the diamond fields south of Abeis nor the export trade out of the port city of Keybir-Aviv, which the Wallis-Haifan Diamond Company carried out of the territory.[6] When the eastern Commonwealth passed into the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia in 1653 AN, the diamond industry of Haifa was reorganized by the Haifan Diamonds Corporation Act, 1663, which placed it under a chartered corporation of the Caputian state.[7]
References
- ^ a b c Haifa National News, reporting the flotation and the sale of the Passasian interest, 1602 AN.
- ^ a b Free State of Haifa.
- ^ a b Ham50.
- ^ a b Haifan Lliev.
- ^ Ismael Todochev.
- ^ Hammish Haifa.
- ^ Haifan Diamonds Corporation Act, 1663.
