Profits and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance - Hardcover

Marchildon, Gregory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802007406 ISBN 13: 9780802007407

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 1996

Synopsis

It has been said of Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) that 'no other Canadian carved his name so large upon his times.' A manipulative, self-serving charmer with immense business acumen, Aitken knew all the important Canadian financiers of his day, and repeatedly demonstrated his remarkable skill for making money in the field of corporate finance. In this book Gregory Marchildon looks at the entrepreneurial history of Max Aitken and his core enterprise, the Royal Securities Corporation. A penetrating study of investment banking and financial capitalism during the Laurier boom years, the book also deals more generally with the relationship between Canadian politics and imperial ideology before the Great War.

Marchildon walks us through the machinations, uncertainties, and bravado that went into Aitken's world of promoting, financing, and stockbroking. He describes in riveting detail the playing out of the great mergers in Canadian politics and business life - most notably that of Stelco and Canada Cement. We see the inner workings of finance capitalism, coloured by many remarkable personalities of the day, and we learn how Aitken's innovative tactics made him a very rich man while still in his twenties. This is a deeply textured account of the dynamics of the securities market in the formative years at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The first study of the whole of Aitken's Canadian career, Profits and Politics adds significantly to our understanding of finance capitalism during the Laurier era, and especially during Canada's first great merger era, from 1909 to 1913.

About this title

About the Author

Gregory P. Marchildon is a professor emeritus at the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the University of Toronto and the founding director of the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.

From the Back Cover

'This is an extremely useful and uncommonly interesting book.'

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802007406
• ISBN 13: 9780802007407
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 277