Catalogue description United Kingdom Commercial Corporation and English and Scottish Commercial Corporation: Reports and Papers

On 4 April 1940 the chancellor of the Exchequer announced that a company, the English Commercial Corporation Limited, was to be formed to overcome difficulties involved in trade between the United Kingdom and neutral countries. The company was registered a week later under the name United Kingdom Commercial Corporation Limited; its capital was provided by the Treasury, but its commercial operations were quite independent save for broad policy consultations with the government. It was not intended that the Corporation should supplant the then existing channels of trade but, on the contrary, to make full use of them.

A subsidiary, the English and Scottish Commercial Corporation Limited, engaged in pre-emptive purchases of an uneconomic nature. When the main corporation went into voluntary liquidation in 1946, this subsidiary was reorganised and continued until its own winding-up in 1953, dealing with the main corporation's Russian business.