Massive Business Archive 1920's to 1950's of Brussels, Belgium Firm, Société Financière de Transports et d'Entreprises Industrielles

Item Details

Massive Business Archive 1920's to 1950's of Brussels, Belgium Firm, Société Financière de Transports et d'Entreprises Industrielles (Sofina)

Collection consists of 16 inches of tissue paper letterpress copies of documents from firm in Belgium. Overall, the material is legible and in good to very good condition. Periodically there exist leaves that are wrinkled and/or torn. Currently wrapped in bundles. Several bundles are bound in a rudimentary fashion. 99% of the material is in French.

Interesting and immense business archive from the Belgium firm "Société Financière de Transports et d'Entreprises Industrielles (Sofina)."  The company was founded in 1898 as an investment trust company.  From 1905 until 1955 Sofina was directed by Belgian-American engineer Dannie Heineman.  Heineman grew the company into a large international public utility engineering firm and developed Sofina into a major international holding company. Dannie Heineman was a major collector of manuscripts and musical scores; the collection is now on deposit at the Pierpont Morgan Library.  Today, Société Financière de Transports et d'Entreprises Industrielles is one of the twenty largest firms in Belgium.

We have scanned through a small percentage of the thousands of leaves in this collection. Of note are letters discussing post-war reparations and claims for war damages. According to Wikipedia, "In 1939, while living in Belgium, Dannie Heineman managed to get the Luxembourg government to open its closed borders and admit approximately 100 Jewish families from Germany." Many of the documents in the archives date to the war period and after making this a potential source of information of business activities in war-torn Europe. 

The firm also owned the Anglo-Argentine Tramways Company perhaps the largest tram operator in the world at the time. We came across a set of documents regarding the 1944 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius which destroyed the Funicular Railroad owned by Anglo-Argentine Tramways Company.  There include many letters from Provincial Tramways of Naples, likely a firm owned by Sofina.

Other projects noted include the construction of a major hydroelectric power plant including many engineering specs, work with an Argentine Electric Company, and paperwork to the Spanish-American Electric Company.  

We have barely touched the surface of documents from this trove. Please see the scans and translations below for a very small, random sampling of documents.  We used google translate so there may be some errors in translation. We did not scan any of what appear to be financial statements and/or stock purchase agreements, yet these too could be of interest to anyone researching business activities in and around World War Two.  Plus, the war reparations and was damages documents could be very interesting. As we in the trade like to note, this is an archive ripe for more research.

Shipping will be $45 domestic, and extremely expensive for international.

**Monsieur R.M. BIGWOOD, c/o Runaples Trust Company Ltd, River Plate House, 12 & 15, South Place, LONDON B.0.2. EXP/1-PN.155/8

Railway

Vesuvius Funicular

Dear Mr. Bigwood,

The English Th. Cook Company owned and operated, until recent years, a funicular railway that allowed the public to reach the vicinity of the summit of Vesuvius. The last eruption, which took place during the war, put this funicular out of service, and the Th. Cook Company finally sold its business to a Neapolitan company called the Société des Chemins de Fer Secondaires Méridionaux (S.C.T.S.M.).  We would be interested to know how the Italian company paid the English company, and we have come to ask you to try to inform us on this subject.

It goes without saying that if you could at the same time gather other interesting information on this transaction, we would take note of it with great interest

We thank you in advance and ask you to accept, dear Mr. Bigwood, the assurance of our best regards

**Brussels Stock Exchange Committee, Palais de l'Stock Exchange

BRUSSELS.

11.P.N. 504./ J325

Gentlemen,

In response to your letter of May 20, we have the honor to inform you that a statement of our situation as of December 31, 1945, covering the period 1943 to 1945, is being established. The reconstruction of the documents destroyed in 1945 as the basis of this statement has been very laborious

We hoped to be able to present this situation to our shareholders; however, a decree-law issued by the Italian Government on May 27, entitled "Allocations to the State of War Profits and Exceptional Speculation Profits," containing, among other things, certain provisions relating to the revaluation of the stock, obliged us to reconsider the entire question; it was, moreover, the announcement of the publication of the decree-law mentioned above and its study that caused us to delay responding to your letter of May 29.

In the current situation, we believe that you could maintain, for the time being, our shares on the official listing under the "Suspended Listing" notice. As soon as the details necessary for establishing a definitive situation have been obtained, we will not fail to communicate them to our shareholders as well as to you.

**Argentine Electricity Company

BUENOS AIRES

Gentlemen,

We have the honor to inform you that we have credited your account with the Société Financière de Transports et d'Entreprises Industrielles Sofina in Brussels with the sum of US Dollars 345,585.30, representing, at an exchange rate of 1 million US Dollars 0.303145, the equivalent of at least 1,140,000.-

This transfer, added to the amount of 1,300,000.- mentioned in your telegram No. 269 of the 27th instant, approximately balances your account as it appears in our books to date.

We ask you to send us your credit note corresponding to this payment. In the meantime, we send you, Gentlemen, our best regards

Hispanic American Electricity Company, Inc

**Following the war in August 1945, more than 40% of the facilities at our headquarters in Kaples (Italy), including the administrative offices and accounting documentation, were destroyed.

It has been a long and difficult process for our company to reconstruct the entries since January 1945; today, we have no accounting records relating to the 1945 financial year

On the other hand, in the state of political and especially monetary instability in Italy, it was impossible - as this situation still stands today - to have a real, even approximate, estimate of the value, only in lire, of our patrimony in Italy, of the counter-value in Belgian francs of the patrimony, and of the results of our exploitation.

The state of the First Establishment and an amalgamation of gold coins, of French papers devalued at various levels, of expenditures in Italian lire recorded in Belgian francs during the years in which they were made. The Italian government has decided on a revaluation of the patrimony in lire on the basis of the average gold prices corresponding to the years during which the expenditures were made; but the establishment of these average rates by the Italian authorities stopped in May of August 1945 and since then the value of the lira has been unknown.

An official inquiry into the revaluation of our assets was carried out by our headquarters in Heples in July 1945; to date, the Finance Inspectorate has not yet published the results of this inquiry.

Once the data were presented, it was necessary to translate them into common phrases, but at what rate? Since 1945, the Italian lira had become "fluid and constant." It was only very recently (since June 16, 1947), following the new misreferencing of Italo-Belgian financial institutions, that a more or less stable rate of 668 was established

Given the above, it has been impossible for us to draw up the balance sheets of our company for the years 1965 to 1945; as stated at the General Meeting of Shareholders dated June 20, 1947, which, unanimously, explained the reasons why the said balance sheets could not be drawn up. Attached is a copy of the statement made by the President to the Meeting.

The Administration of Contributions, and in particular Mr. E. 7. Effis, Controller of Contributions, understands, through a long and detailed discussion, and the comments made by the Secretary of State, this situation, which has prevented us from producing our balance sheets and submitting the relevant financial statements

Following the probable non-communication of our tax file, the Central Office of Taxation of Companies has sent us a report, photocopies attached, relating to the 1946 tax year.

The reasons which prevented us from drawing up the balance sheet for the 1945 financial year are the same as those developed above above for the years 1945-1944 and are for 1946, under the same conditions as those for which the said report was drawn up, for the 1966 tax year, the administration has until December 1948 taken all precautionary measures,

It is certain that, during this period, we have drawn up a balance sheet and that we will have satisfied our tax obligations, as we regularly did before the 1945 tax year

As we have just explained to you, we are grateful that no follow-up is required in the minutes of July 28, 1947, committing us to subscribe and transmit to the administration the documents requested by us, which we have already prepared,

Thanking you for the favorable response you will be kind enough to give to our suite, we ask you to accept, Gentlemen, the assurance of our highest consideration.

**Mr. Marquis,

We have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your undated letter received today, requesting us to debit your "Titrea" account for 2,100 preferred shares of the Société Internationale d'Energie Hydre Electrique by crediting your "Titrea" account for blocked shares of H.M. H. Wauters et Cie.

We have made the requested transfer after which your "Titrea" account is balanced by 400 Sidro preferred shares, in your favor.

Accepted, Mr. Marquis, the assurance of name

your highest consideration.

On behalf of the Syndicate's Executive Committee

**We note, of course, that this involves work imposed on you by the paving and road repairs undertaken by the municipalities. We would nevertheless like to know if it would not be possible to further explain the Company's excessively precarious situation and to obtain either that the municipalities modify their programs and postpone certain works, or that they assume the immediate expense by giving the Company the possibility of reimbursing over a period of several years.

We would be grateful if you would provide us with clarification on the above points and ask you to accept, dear Mr. Martini, the assurance of our best regards.

**October 9, 1989.

S

They specifically studied cements and carried out long-term tensile and compressive strength tests (5 & 10 years) as well as expansion measurements, which are of great importance for the question of insulators.

Only determinations requiring very specialized equipment (shock waves, power waves) or a voltage at 300 KV (chain beam, tension reinforcement testing) cannot be carried out in our laboratories.

We offer you, under certain conditions, the opportunity to compare in our laboratories and to the best of our ability, the most common models from the following firms: Ohio Bros, Canadian Fordelain, Westinghouse, Locke, Lapp, Bullara, Fil, Lesquin Electro Caramèque, Rosenthal, and Hermsdorf

For the other tests, they will be carried out in a university laboratory or in the same laboratory, in the presence of a delegate from the "Sofina" laboratories.

Please accept, Gentlemen, the assurance of our consideration

**Gentlemen,

We have examined your financial forecasts for the period from September 8 to October 7, 1955, from which it appears that the cash deficit to be expected for the beginning of October amounts to nearly 25 million lire 29. We understand that we should not expect certain payments, particularly to businesses, to be covered by partial release from special subsidies. On the other hand, we note that the items you have planned for businesses, Vacuum, and the Relief Fund are higher than last month, and consequently, we agree with you that it is on these items that there might be a way to gain a little time. In any case, financial assistance would be necessary, and in accordance with your request, we have contacted the Director General of Italcasse, asking Ms. Piola to present our request in person. We hope that we will be granted satisfaction.

We assume that your next request for subsidies will emphasize with renewed insistence the incompressibility of current operating costs and the undeniable need for an increase in subsidies.

Please accept, Gentlemen, the expression of our most distinguished oaths

Just a couple of the thousands of letters in this archive.