New Zealand Company ships
The New Zealand Company was a 19th-century English company that played a key role in the colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles of systematic colonisation devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the southern hemisphere. Under Wakefield's model, the colony would attract capitalists who would then have a ready supply of labour—migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners, but who would have the expectation of one day buying land with their savings.
National Mortgage and Agency Company of New Zealand
On 1 February 1878 the column "City Intelligence" in "The Times" included this statement: ""The National Mortgage and Agency Company of New Zealand Limited has made an arrangement with the firms of Russell, Le Cren and Co., of London and Russell, Ritchie and Co., of Dunedin and Timaru, New Zealand, for the transfer of their businesses to the company. Mr George Gray Russell will join the board of directors as soon as the necessary formalities are completed and Mr John Macfarlane Ritchie will be general manager of the company in New Zealand. On and after 1 February the business of the company will carried on at No. 37 Lombard Street, E.C."" While Russell did attend board meetings when in London he was never a director of NMA. The dissolution of the partnership of the three men was reported in the Gazette of 2 August 1878.