E. D. Sassoon & Co.

Why Shanghai knows the name

E. D. Sassoon & Co., in Chinese 新沙逊洋行 (Xīn Shāxùn Yángháng) or “New Sassoon”, was the family firm that built Sassoon House on the Bund. It began as a rival to David Sassoon & Co., the older family house, and in the 1920s it moved its centre of gravity to Shanghai under Sir Victor Sassoon. Its towers, rents and hotel made it one of the biggest property owners in the International Settlement.

Who founded it, and when?

Elias David Sassoon (1820–1880), the second son of David Sassoon, founded the firm after quarrelling with his brothers. English Wikipedia, citing Stanley Jackson, dates the split to 1867, three years after David’s death, and says the new firm opened “modest offices in Bombay and Shanghai”. Sixth Tone and a Chinese firm dictionary date New Sassoon to 1872. Both dates are in print and neither source explains the difference.

The newcomer started with dried fruits, metals, tea, silk, spices and camphor, but soon concentrated on exporting opium, cotton and cloth from India to China. It grew faster than the older house: in the Edwardian years its capital was £1.25–1.5 million, against about £0.5 million for David Sassoon & Co. Sir Jacob Elias Sassoon led it after Elias died in 1880 and opened branches in Calcutta and Karachi.

What did it sell, and what did it stop selling?

Opium was the original staple and it left the trade after Britain agreed in 1907 to phase out opium exports to China over ten years. Maisie Meyer dates the end of the Baghdadi merchants’ opium trade to 1917. Betta notes that the Sassoon firms kept their opium records in English as early as the 1880s.

Cotton lasted longer. In 1879 the firm bought the bankrupt Alexandra Mills in Bombay and went on buying weak mills and reviving them. By the First World War it was the largest textile group in India; in 1927 it was Bombay’s largest mill owner; by the start of the Second World War it owned 15 mills and employed over 30,000 people.

How did it become a Shanghai landlord?

The land was already there. The firm bought its corner plot on the Bund at Nanjing Road in the 1870s. The Shanghai gazetteer gives 1875 and a price of 6,500 taels a mu; Sixth Tone gives 1877 and 80,000 taels for the plot, which it says was worth 1.7 million taels by the 1920s. Sixth Tone, citing the historian Tang Peiji, puts New Sassoon’s property in Shanghai at 13.3 million taels in 1921.

Silas Hardoon belongs to this period. The gazetteer says he left the older Sassoon firm in 1886 to manage New Sassoon’s property department, while also dealing in opium on his own account.

Then came Victor. After the deaths of his father and an uncle in 1924 he was chairman and, with his uncle’s widow Mozelle Gubbay, main owner of a business valued at £15 million, though the gazetteer says he had taken control in 1918. In 1923 the firm bought the majority of Arnhold & Co. of Shanghai, and with it the Cathay Land Company, which owned flats and a hotel. Profits from Bombay’s mills went into Shanghai towers. In 1928 the firm formed the E. D. Sassoon Banking Company, and in March 1930 its Shanghai headquarters opened in Sassoon House, while Bombay had still been the headquarters in 1927.

What did it build?

Palmer & Turner designed the main buildings. Sassoon House (Cathay Hotel, now the north building of the Fairmont Peace Hotel) (1926–29, 77 m) held two banks and shops on the ground floor, the firm’s offices on floors three and four, the Cathay Hotel above them and the Sassoon family’s residence at the top. Cathay Mansions was built in 1925–29 for the Cathay Land Company at a cost of 3.3 million yuan. Grosvenor House, next door, cost 4.25 million yuan and earned 337,000 yuan a year in rents, which meant the investment was paid back in thirteen years. The gazetteer explains why this paid: the Settlement taxed land by area rather than floor area, so a tall block of flats gave far more rent per taxed square metre than a lane of houses.

The Embankment Building of 1935 stands on the site of Baokang Li, a lane estate the Sassoons had owned since 1887, and a stone in its wall still bears the initials E.D.S. The gazetteer’s list of the group’s companies includes Cathay Land, the Shanghai Land Investment Company, 祥泰 and Arnhold, and of its buildings also the Metropole, Hamilton House, the Verdun Apartments and Ciro’s. A 2006 magazine article calls Victor Sassoon Shanghai’s top realtor by the mid-1930s. The Southern Methodist University note says he owned over 1,800 properties here at one time.

What did the sources not say about arms and opium?

The gazetteer’s life of Victor Sassoon says that besides property he dealt in opium and arms, and Sixth Tone mentions arms sales. No source read for this entry gives amounts, dates or customers for the arms trade, and the firm is recorded as having left the opium trade after 1907. The claim stays in the record as the gazetteer’s, without more.

How did the Shanghai business end?

The gazetteer says that from 1932 Victor Sassoon began to sell Shanghai property as the Japanese threat grew; by 1941 the book value of the real estate held by the firm’s direct subsidiaries was 86.893 million yuan. The Japanese seized the Cathay Hotel and other holdings after 8 December 1941. After the war the headquarters moved to Nassau in the Bahamas, and in 1958 the Shanghai businesses were transferred to a Chinese state company, 中华企业公司, against unpaid tax. Wikipedia says the firm had sold its controlling interest in Arnhold in 1957.

Elsewhere the firm lasted longer. After Victor died in 1961, the banking subsidiary was sold in 1972 to Wallace Brothers, renamed in November 1974 and taken over by Standard Chartered in 1976; the parent became DK Investments (Crosby Square) Ltd in 1978.

What the sources disagree on

• Founding: 1867 (Wikipedia, citing Jackson) or 1872 (Sixth Tone, a Chinese firm dictionary).
• Bund plot: bought in 1875 at 6,500 taels per mu (gazetteer) or in 1877 for 80,000 taels (Sixth Tone).
• Victor’s control: 1918 (gazetteer) or 1924 (Wikipedia and others).
• Grosvenor House: 1934 (gazetteer) or 1935 (heritage registers).

What to look for

The green pyramid roof of Sassoon House at the Bund end of Nanjing Road is the firm’s most visible mark; look at the arcade to see where the banks and shops once were. In the former French Concession the two Jin Jiang towers, Cathay Mansions and Grosvenor House, were Cathay Land Company buildings. On North Suzhou Road, find the E.D.S. stone in the wall of the Embankment Building. The firm’s offices, Bombay headquarters and cotton mills are not here; what is gone is the business itself, leaving its buildings.