| Code | NA12 |
| Corporate Name | Frederick Huth & Co |
| Dates | 1809 - 1936 |
| OtherFormsOfName | Frederick Huth & Co ('new') (1922 - ); New Huths |
| Activity | The company was founded by Frederick Huth, a German merchant, in 1809. Huths experienced financial difficulties during the First World War and in 1921 received assistance from the Bank of England. In 1922 the firm merged with Konig Brothers. Huths was wound up in 1936 and the surviving business transferred to the British Overseas Bank.
The partners were Edward Huth, Frederick Huth Jackson, Lewis Huth Walters, Louis E Meinertzhagen and the Acorn Trust Ltd, of which the partners were directors, was another pre-moratorium acceptance debtor to the Bank. Its ability to repay the advance was not improved by the revolution in Russia, where they had been very active, nor by the death of one of the partners, F Huth Jackson in 1921. In a support operation at end-December 1922, the Bank lent £1.5m, £620,000 of which was under the HM Treasury (HMT) arrangements of December 1921 for refinancing pre-moratorium debt, to the partners in Huths and £0.5m to the Konig brothers, also merchant bankers, to form a new partnership which was to trade under the same name, Frederick Huth & Co ('new'), certain doubtful, slow and frozen assets being left in the original Frederick Huth & Co ('old') in which the Bank took an interest through a deed of trust with Acorn. The new Huths traded successfully for a few years but from the late twenties the relationship between F A Konig and the other Huth partners deteriorated along with trading conditions and absorption by the British Overseas Bank (BOB) in 1936.
The old Huth & Co was incorporated in March 1928 in the name of Cordillera Investments Ltd, with Acorn Trust taking 415 non-voting shares and the Bank 415 voting shares. Certain realisations were made in the 1930s and the proceeds used to reduce the outstanding debt to the Bank. After World War Two Cordillera was left with claims on Poland and possible liabilities to old Russian customers. Creditors' voluntary liquidation was begun in 1961, and the winding-up completed in 1963, when the Bank was assigned the Polish claims and indemnified the liquidator against any liability arising from outstanding Russian claims. |
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