Beddoe Rees - Business

Business

As an architect Rees designed many Welsh chapels before giving up his practice about the beginning of the 1st World War to become managing director of Welsh Garden Cities Ltd, the organisation which built garden villages in several of industrial valleys in South Wales. Rees built up extensive business interests becoming the chairman of a number of companies, mostly in the coal mining and related industries. These included Ashburnham Collieries, Ltd, Ashburnham Steamship and Coal Co. Ltd and North Amman Collieries. He was also a Director of Amalgamated Anthracite Collieries and Welsh Anthracite Collieries, Ltd. At the end of his life however, Rees suffered a complete reversal of financial fortune with the failure of his financial affairs, and he was adjudged bankrupt on 24 July 1930, the debt involving many thousands of pounds. After two adjournments for illness Rees finally appeared for examination on 9 December 1930. He lodged accounts showing total liabilities of £415,951 against assets of £528. However, in March 1931 his debts were discharged, despite the objection of the Official Receiver that he had engaged in rash and hazardous speculation and unjustifiable extravagance in living. The Registrar of the Bankruptcy Court accepted that the depression in the Welsh coal industry had been out of Rees’ control and that the state of the stock market meant other share dealings financed on borrowed monies provided no income in dividend. He also seemed to accept that Rees had been punished personally, in business and socially by the fact of his bankruptcy. Beddoe Rees died soon after these proceedings in May 1931.