The New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency
Company (Limited).

This powerful company, which was established in 1864, has a capital of £3,500,000, and a reserve fund of £250,000. Its head quarters in the colonies are in Auckland, and it has offices in twenty-one towns and cities in New Zealand, besides branches and agencies in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Rock-hampton, Launceston, Fiji, and San Francisco. The head office of the company is No. 1, Queen Victoria street, Mansion House, London. The Christchurch offices, of which we give an illustration, are situated in Hereford street, and are in a handsome three-storey building erected two years ago. Besides these, the company has a large brick two-storey grain and wool store, capable of displaying 6000 bales of wool for sale, with extensive cellarage, on the side of the line of railway fronting Durham-street.

The company makes advances in the Australasian Colonies on produce, on the stations and stocks of runholders, and on the growing clips of wool; and receives the consignment of wool, grain, tallow, leather, hides, skins, horns, preserved and frozen meats, metals, cotton, kauri gum, &o., &c., for sale in London, on terms which may be learned on application to the manager in London, to the managing director or secretary at Auckland, or to the agents of the company in Australia, New Zealand, &c. It may be well, however, to state that the company enters into no mercantile ventures on its own account.

The company is prepared to execute indents, forwarded through its agents in the Colonies and California, of British, Continental, Eastern, and American goods and products, on the most liberal terms.

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The company also accepts the consignment in the Colonies and California of produce and manufactures for sale there at customary rates of commission and guarantee.

A marked feature of the company's business is the growing importance of its local auction sales. The auction sales of wool, held at intervals of three or four weeks during the season, in the company's Christchurch wool and grain warehouses, have grown steadily in magnitude since their commencement in 1881; the number of bales submitted during the past season being nearly one-half of the total local offerings. At the same warehouses during the grain season periodical grain sales are held; and once every week throughout the year there is an auction sale of hides, sheepskins, tallow, and fat.

In 1883 the company inaugurated auction sales of stock, which are held regularly at Addington yards and at the various district saleyards throughout the Province. This branch of the business has grown to large proportions by careful and popular management.

The company acts as agent—for Governments, Town Boards, Road Boards, and Companies in Australia and New Zealand, requiring the execution of contracts and financial business, &c., in this country; for freeholders and runholders, undertaking the financial management of their properties during their absence; for landed proprietors in the Colonies, receiving their rents, negotiating and effecting sales of their freeholds, and generally superintending their interests; and for trustees and boards of executors in the Colonies and elsewhere, undertaking the management of colonial trust and executorship estates.