From hire purchase to property development: the rise and demise of the Industrial Acceptance Corporation in Australia, 1926-77

Harry Knowles, Greg Patmore and John Shields

Accounting History Review, 2008, vol. 18, issue 3, 283-302

Abstract: While there are numerous histories of major Australian banks, the extant literature on the history of the Australian financial service sector pays only incidental attention to the role of finance companies and other non-bank financial institutions in the sector's long-term transformation, particularly the expansion of consumer credit. Drawing on Chandler's classic insights on the dynamics of firm strategy and structure, this paper focuses on the growth and development of one particular finance company - Industrial Acceptance Corporation (IAC) - between the 1920s and 1970s. IAC began as a subsidiary of a US finance company and grew to become one of Australia's leading and innovative finance companies. Based on hire purchase for automobiles and other consumer durables, it diversified into property development during the late 1960s. Imprudent lending practices concerning property development led to financial difficulties in the mid-1970s and ultimately its full takeover by US banking giant, Citibank, in 1977.

Keywords: hire purchase; consumer finance; property development; Morris Plan; Industrial Acceptance Corporation; Citibank (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585200802383273 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:acbsfi:v:18:y:2008:i:3:p:283-302

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rabf21

DOI: 10.1080/09585200802383273

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting History Review is currently edited by Stephen Walker

More articles in Accounting History Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().