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Trustee Companies

Towards the end of the 19th century, as the gold-rush generation died, an opportunity arose for companies to administer deceased estates. William Templeton issued a prospectus for the Trustees Executors & Agency Co. Ltd in 1878, but the company's commencement was delayed until the passage of a special Act of Parliament in 1879. The novelty of the concept and considerable controversy surrounding aspects of the company's articles of association notwithstanding, four new firms followed: the Perpetual Executors' and Trustees' Association of Australia Limited and the Union Trustees, Executors and Administrators' Co. Ltd were both established on 8 December 1885, and the National Trustees, Executors, & Agency Co. of Australasia Ltd and the short-lived Colonial Permanent Trustees, Executor & Agency Co. Ltd were formed in late 1887.

These trustee companies - whose offices were in the heart of the financial district west of Elizabeth Street, mostly in either Collins Street or Queen Street - were important participants in the investment market, particularly before World War II. Restricted by government regulation to government securities and mortgages, they were run conservatively by boards drawn from the banking and insurance industries. The four Melbourne firms had a disproportionate share of the national industry up to the end of Word War I, despite the emergence of provincial and interstate competitors. There was little change until the early 1960s, when the Union and the National absorbed smaller rivals, while the Perpetual became part of the new Sydney-based Perpetual Trustees, comprising Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland partners. The industry was rocked in 1983 when the oldest and most prestigious firm, Trustees Executors & Agency, failed after abandoning its conservative investment practices to make a disastrous foray in the volatile property market.

D.T. Merrett