It is with great regret that we have to announce that Sir Julian Hodge passed away peacefully in his sleep on Sunday 18th July, 2004. He was 99.
We would like to thank all customers and admirers of Sir Julian for their condolences at this time.
The following report was published in the Western Mail on the 20th July 2004.
Man who built his own bank
Plumber's son challenged the City to establish Cardiff as a financial centre.
Sir Julian Hodge, founder of the Julian Hodge Bank and well-known South Wales businessman and philanthropist, who died at his home in Jersey this weekend, would have been 100 in October.
Few can lay claim to having brought stockbroking to Wales, founded three banks and fought the corner of smaller investors, in addition to running a string of businesses.
He built the foundation of his wealth and power in Wales at a time when many ambitious Welshmen were planning only to leave.
Julian Stephen Alfred Hodge was born in Camberwell, London on October 15, 1904 and was educated at Pengam Grammar School and Cardiff Technical College. His father worked as a plumber and the family were Roman Catholic.
As a young man it was said of him, "He performed no outstanding feats as a schoolboy or a young man; he simply worked hard at his career."
Sir Julian left school at 13 and after working as a railway clerk, trained as an accountant and set up his business in the Monmouthshire valleys, with offices in Blackwood and Bargoed.
From the very beginning his interests centred on the insurance and taxation work connected with company formation.
In 1937, he helped to build what later became known as the Jackson Withers circuit, operating more than 50 cinemas in a group, comprising South Wales Cinemas, Cardiff Cinemas and 16 other companies. He was to become managing director of all these.
He said his destiny was decided in 1940 while he was employed by the Great Western Railway Company and was given a Bank of Newport note dated April 20, 1821, by a man whom he had helped with a loan of £25. The man was later killed in the battle of El Alamein.
It made him question why so much finance was controlled from outside Wales. He then set about wresting some of that control from the City of London institutions and creating a financial services industry within Wales.
Early in the Second World War, he moved to Cardiff and in 1946 branched out into hire purchase, setting up an industrial holding company, Gwent and West of England Enterprises, with an authorised capital of £5,000.
At this time he also acquired the controlling interest of a small company, Anglo Auto Finance, which was virtually insolvent.
This was to mark the beginnings of the Hodge Group, which by 1973 had interests in banking and instalment credit, insurance and broking, motor manufacturing and engineering, motor vehicle retailing and servicing and cinemas.
In 1953, after a spirited campaign, Sir Julian was appointed a licensed
dealer in securities by the Board of Trade, which empowered Gwent and
West of England Enterprises to act as an issuing house, the first to
be established in Wales.
In 1954, it handled the acquisition for Avana Holdings of Hopkins Morgan & Co for more than £350,000. In the same year other companies were acquired for £265,000.
During the 1950s he was involved in some notable business battles. In 1957, at the Milford Docks Company meeting, he presented questions occupying nearly six pages of typescript to the accompaniment of high-pitched shouts of "Nonsense!" and "Sit down!"
Two years later, at an Ely Brewery meeting in Cardiff, he was leading his dissident forces of dissatisfied shareholders "with the poise of a seasoned warrior".
February 1971 saw the end of his quest to set up a Bank of Wales following a two-year fight over the title of the company - The Commercial Bank of Wales.
Not for 50 years had a company been allowed to use the word "bank" in Britain.
Through the Jane Hodge Foundation, he provided a financial endowment to the University of Wales, Cardiff, to establish two new chairs in Accounting and Business Finance at the Cardiff Business School, which were to have an important influence on the development of business education in Cardiff.
These were followed in the 1990s by the establishment of the Sir Julian Hodge Chair in Marketing and International Business.
Sir Julian was a former fellow, treasurer and president of the university.
In 1989 he donated £5,000 to help establish the centre for Japanese Studies with the Cardiff Business School. He also sponsored The Julian Hodge Institute of Applied Macroeconomics.
During the 1990s, from his home in Jersey, to where he had moved in 1985, Sir Julian orchestrated campaigns against Europe which he saw as symbolising waste, compromise, bureaucracy, interference and an assault on basic sovereignty.
A lifelong socialist, he disliked the idea of a Welsh Assembly and supported the campaign opposed to proposals to bring greater power over Welsh affairs from London to Wales.
During a business career spanning more than 70 years, he was founder chairman of the Bank of Wales 1971-85; chair of the Avana Group (1973-81); Carlyle Trust (Jersey) (from 1997) and St Aubins Investment since 1986.
He was also chairman of the Bank of Wales (IoM) 1974-85; founder and chair of the Jane Hodge Foundation 1962 (in memory of his late mother) and Sir Julian Hodge Charitable Trust (1964), and he was director of Standard Chartered Bank in 1973-75. In 1964 he served as chairman of the Aberfan Disaster Fund Industrial Project Sub Committee and was a member of the Welsh Economic Council from 1965-68 and the Welsh Council from 1968-79.
From 1968-76 he was treasurer of the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology before becoming president from 1981-85.
He was also a member of the Foundation Fund, University of Surrey Committee, and the Duke of Edinburgh Conference 1974, the Prince of Wales Committee, 179-85, and president of the South Glamorgan District St John Ambulance Brigade.
Sir Julian was an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Accountants and a LLD University of Wales, a Knight of St John (1977) and Knight of St Gregory 1978.
He was created a Knight Bachelor in 1970.
Sir Julian Hodge married Moira (nee Thomas) in 1950.
They had two sons and a daughter.
Courtesy of Robert Llewellyn Jones and The Western Mail