With Rhodes and him as directors, and his brother Thomas as chairman, they registered Gold Fields of South Africa Ltd in early 1887.

The company was structured to enormously favor Rudd and Rhodes, with its London board unaware of most of their activities in southern Africa.

Still, Rudd remained a friend of Rhodes and a director of Gold Fields until 1902, after which he retired to Scotland, "enjoying the life of an Edwardian plutocrat".

[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] In the late 1860s in South Africa, Rudd married his first wife, Frances Georgina "Fanny" Leighton Chiappini (born 1846).

[1] Her great aunt was Maria Stella, Lady Newborough who claimed that she was not a member of the Chiappini family but had been exchanged at birth for a boy who became King Louis Philippe.

[13] Frances died in 1896 of influenza or tuberculosis, and in 1898 Rudd married 24-year-old Corrie Maria Wallace, the daughter of his partner in the machinery company in Kimberley, with whom he had three more children.