Elder Smith controlling wool; moves into mining, finance before John Elliot takeover dooms it
Elder House: Head office of Elder Smith Goldsborough Mort in Currie Street, Adelaide, before the 1980s takeover.
A key moment for Elder Smith and Co in the early 1950s was appointing Norman Giles from Elders WA as managing director. Giles took Elders Smith and Co to nationally dominating the wool market. Elders had continued expanding by moving into Victoria by buying Commonwealth Wool and De Garis and Sons. Its banking business for rural clients was significant, lending more than the equivalent of $400 million.
In the never-repeated 1950s wool price boom, Elder Smith controlled 10.1% of the national wool clip behind Dalgety and Goldsbrough Mort.
Giles’ masterstroke in 1962 was to merge Elder Smith and Goldsborough Mort, with headquarters in Adelaide, as Australia’s top wool broker with a 34% share. Giles also expanded Elders Smith into Gove Alumina and Robe River mining ventures, launched Elders Finance and Investment Co. and bought Beef City, a high-quality feedlot in Toowoomba.
By the 1980s, the predators were circling Elders Smith and its huge cash reserves. Robert Holmes a Court secretly bought a major stake in the company.
Court sold his holding when John Elliot, using the canning company Henry Jones IXL, bought a controlling stake in Elder Smith. The company became Elders IXL and one of Australia’s corporate giants.
In the 1980s, it took over Carlton and United Breweries and, competing with Robert Holmes a Court, made a bid for BHP, and bought Britain’s Courage Brewery. But, by 1989, Elders IXL, hit by the recession, had been sold to the J.M. Smucker Co. Carrying a huge debt, Elders Pastoral became a division, and no long the owner, of what was now called Foster’s. (In 2005, Elliot was declared bankrupt.)
