Ukraine: 1913 Belgian Bond To Finance Electrification Of Odessa

That is a really interesting historical document, Hondo! From a time when Western European capital flowed into Russia (Odessa was in Russia then), a huge country with huge needs for investments in infrastructure, but lacking the financial resources to do so by itself. Societe d'electricite d'Odessa was a Belgian company founded in 1909 which built a power plant and an electricity grid for the city. The outbreak of World War 1 in 1914 does not seem to have adversely affected its operations - the dividend for 1915-1916 seems to have been redeemed, judging by the coupons used. The Russian revolution in 1917 of course ended that, with the company assets taken over the Bolsheviks. All the coupons up to 1939-1940 became worthless. The company was not liquidated until 1954, by then probably all hope to get compensation from the Russian government had vanished.

erafjel, thank you very much for this information! I wondered about why only a few of the coupons had been redeemed, but had not connected it to the Russian revolution.