British Motor Syndicate

[5] Directors at the time of flotation, November 1896: Commercial manager: Herbert Osbaldeston Duncan Brokers: Ernest T Hooley, Chapman & Rowe Consulting Engineer: Frederick R. Simms[5] The Economist was reported by the Coventry Herald as saying that the public might judge for themselves if reasonable dividends could be earned on the inflated amount of the syndicate's capital.

By this time Hamburg-born London consulting engineer Simms had had these arrangements with his personal friend Gottlieb Daimler for some years.

The new Coventry premises were shared with Edward Joel Pennington, a confidence trickster who obtained most of the cash BMS raised from the public in exchange for no cars.

Herbert Austin, for instance, abandoned the development of his first Wolseley because of its too close similarity to a vehicle the patent for which was owned by BMS.

[8] But BMS ultimately failed, most obviously because of a 1901 court decision that gutted its business model, by which time rapid improvements in technology had made the company's patents obsolete in any case.