Whitehall Securities

Whitehall Securities Corporation Ltd was formed in 1907 by Weetman Dickinson Pearson MP who became Viscount Cowdray in 1917 together with Harold Pearson MP. Sir Weetman was nominated as President as well as being a founding director. The company was capitalised at £1,000,000. On 12th December 1990 the company name was changed to Pearson Management Services Ltd. The company formed part of what is now the Pearson PLC group of business interests which were initially amongst the world's leading oil and construction contractors.

In 1929, Whitehall Securities became a financial investor of Airwork Services, a British private aviation conglomerate established by Nigel Norman and Alan Muntz the year before.

In 1935, Viscount Cowdray's younger son, Bernard Clive Pearson, took over the management of Whitehall Securities. By that time, Whitehall Securities had acquired shareholdings in a number of Britain's leading pre-World War II private airlines. Among these was Spartan Air Lines that was formed as a subsidiary to Spartan Aircraft which had been acquired by Whitehall Securities. In 1931 Spartan Aircraft's operations were allied to the Saunders Roe company in which Whitehall Securities had taken a majority shareholding. In April 1935, Whitehall Securities and Jersey Airways formed United Airways as a sister airline to Spartan Air Lines.

Whitehall Securities had acquired a controlling shareholding in Hillman's Airways, which had become a public company in December 1934 following the death of Hillman's founder Ted Hillman. In September 1935, Hillman's Airways, Spartan Air Lines and United Airways to form Allied British Airways. A month later, the new airline shortened its name to British Airways. On 1 August 1936, British Airways took over British Continental Airways, and the following month it absorbed Crilly Airways. Whitehall Securities was joined as investor in the merged airline by the French banking company Emile Erlanger & Co.

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