A Business of Sorts

Abstract

After nine years as chief executive, Eccles retired in April 1994. In the report on CDC which he wrote in 1982, preceding his appointment, Eccles had criticised the corporation for losing commercial sharpness and he feared it was in danger of becoming ‘nothing but a banker’. How far had its nature been transformed in the intervening period? The evidence requires quite careful interpretation in the sense that it is not difficult to make out a case that not all that much had changed in terms of the overall figures, yet the reality was that CDC had become a very different institution, and the evidence is there. First, let the continuities be acknowledged. After prolonged debate, it had been determined by a Conservative government that CDC was unsuitable for privatisation, and this had been endorsed by two independent reports from Coopers & Lybrand and SG Warburg. The growing intellectual consensus that developing countries should do more to encourage their own private sectors, and should be more receptive to market forces in international trade and investment, seemingly endorsed the wisdom of the British government owning an agency dedicated to investment initiatives in support of these arguments. The working party reviews of 1986 and 1993 had refined the objectives of CDC investment, but had not radically altered them.