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Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company (BTLP) was a Canadian utility company that operated light and power utilities in Spain. It was incorporated on September 12, 1911 in Toronto, Canada by Frederick Stark Pearson. The company was developed by Belgian-American engineer Dannie Heineman. It operated in Spain but was owned mostly by the Belgian holding companies SOFINA and SIDRO and became the subject of the important International Court of Justice case, Belgium v. Spain (1970). ==Juan March== Juan March was a Spaniard from Mallorca in the Baleric Islands who had begun his career as a smuggler and had become an industrialist and banker. March was widely known for involvement in lucrative illegal activities, for bribery and political influence, and for bending the law whenever he saw a benefit. This was exemplified in his 1948 takeover of the Barcelona Traction, Light, and Power Company (BTLP) for a small fraction of its real worth. BTLP was a utility company which provided power and streetcar services in Barcelona; originally incorporated in Canada, it was mostly owned by Belgian investors. BTLP had come through the Spanish Civil War largely undamaged, and was quite profitable. Its assets were about £10,000,000 (about $500,000,000 in 2010). However, for the convenience of some of its foreign investors, BTLP had issued some bonds denominated in pounds, and the interest on these bonds was payable in pounds. The Spanish government had imposed currency restrictions: BTLP was unable to exchange its Spanish pesetas for pounds, and so could not pay the interest. This was not viewed with any great alarm by the bond-holders; BTLP had plenty of pesetas and would pay the interest arrears whenever the currency restrictions were relaxed. However, March scented an opportunity. Agents secretly acting for him quietly bought up the bonds (about £500,000). Then in February 1948, they appeared in a Spanish court, asserted that BTLP was in default on the bonds, and demanded immediate relief. The judge agreed and awarded ownership of all BTLP's assets to them (in fact to March). BTLP's foreign investors appealed, but got no relief from Spanish courts. The Belgian government appealed to the International Court of Justice but to no avail: the final resolution coming in 1970, eight years after March's death. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Barcelona Traction」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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