1. Percival Farquhar was an American investor and financier with extensive interests in Latin America and pre-Soviet Russia, including railways, mines, hotels, and restaurants.
15 Facts About Percival Farquhar
1. 2.
Percival Farquhar's mother was Elizabeth N Farquhar.
3.
Percival Farquhar attended the York Collegiate Institute, spent two years working in his father's office, and then attended the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, where he studied science and engineering.
4.
Percival Farquhar was vice-president of the Atlantic Coast Electric Railway and the Staten Island Railway, which controlled rail services in New York.
5.
Percival Farquhar was partner and director of the Compania de Electricidad de Cuba in Cuba and partner and vice-president of the Guatemala Railway.
6.
Percival Farquhar owned railways and mines in Russia and dealt personally with Lenin during the years when those assets were being nationalized and foreign specialists were held over to assist.
7.
Percival Farquhar's dream was to control all the railways of Latin America, in a version of manifest destiny.
8.
Visionary, controversial, and audacious, Percival Farquhar became the greatest private investor in Brazil between 1905 and 1918.
9.
The writing on Percival Farquhar is full of contradictions, making it very difficult to sort through the legend, hagiography, and libel found in his biographies.
10.
In contrast, the Brazilian historian Edgard Carone, in his book A Republica Velha says that Percival Farquhar's businesses "lived off government favors".
11.
Percival Farquhar's investors lost all of their capital, and Farquhar was ruined.
12.
The genius of Percival Farquhar lay more in his vision and capacity to raise money to expand than in the efficient management or cost control in his 38 businesses.
13.
At the beginning of 1913, Percival Farquhar came to realize that he was bankrupt.
14.
Percival Farquhar had a great ability to get himself into trouble with governments and nationalist groups.
15.
Percival Farquhar believed that no country in the world could become developed without good hotels and fine cuisine.