War-time financial problems

192 FOREIGN CAPITAL

and laborious; it puts difficulties in the way of
investment in English securities, whether by British
subject or alien, ft would supply, no doubt, to the
Board of Trade useful information as to the extent
of foreign investment in English industries, but the
price paid for this advantage would, in the Com-
mittee's opinion, be too great. If adopted, the
scheme could be evaded. And, with regard to
companies in general, the Committee's recommenda-
tions go the length of allowing complete freedom as
to the nationality both of the corporators and of the
Board. They would allow, for instance, American
capitalists to come here and establish themselves as a
British corporation in which all the corporators and
all the directors were American, and so with every
other nationality. They would make no discrimina-
tion between aliens of different nationality, for, if
there is to be such discrimination, there must be the
machinery of disclosure, involving a deterrent effect
and acting prejudicially in the case of all investors.
But, if any such discrimination were adopted, the
Committee thinks that at any rate it should be
limited to some short period, say, three or five years
after the end of the war.

If, however, the legislature should decide upon
the necessity of disclosure of alien ownership, the
Committee draws up the following scheme for
securing it in Paragraph 15 of its Report:

15. For reasons already given, it is not possible
efficiently to ensure full disclosure, but the following
suggestions would, in the absence of deliberate and
intentional evasion (which would be quite possible), meet