Why it is on record
Sir Alfred Lewis Jones's conference-line monopoly on the West African route. Funded the Bank of British West Africa (1894 — today First Bank) to handle the trade's currency needs; financed Liverpool's School of Tropical Medicine (1898).
Record held
Longest-running monopoly on the UK–West Africa shipping conference; corporate parent of what became First Bank of Nigeria.
Deep dive
Elder Dempster & Co., assembled under Sir Alfred Lewis Jones from 1891, was the dominant Liverpool-based shipping line on the West African coast through the colonial period. It controlled — directly or by conference agreement — the overwhelming share of cargo and passenger movement between Britain and Nigeria from the 1890s into the 1960s. Jones's bank (Bank of British West Africa, 1894 — now First Bank) was originally founded to bank the Elder Dempster West African trade.
Accountability
The conference-line freight cartel that suppressed indigenous shipping into the 1970s; the National Shipping Line (1959) was created in direct response.