Still shipping

In the list of Lebanese businesses, the name sticks out — Henry Heald and Co sounds incongruous. In many ways it is, yet it is believed to be the country’s oldest company. Henry Heald and Company steamboat and shipping experts was registered in 1837, more than 100 years before the country gained independence. All of Mr Heald’s contemporaries have since closed down, meaning the shipping agents are believed to be the oldest continually registered company in Lebanon.  Little is known about Heald, an Englishman from Yorkshire, apart from the fact that he had been living in the “Levant”, for several decades before setting up the company at a time when European trade was expanding rapidly. Philip Mansel, author of the book ‘Levant’ which tracks the history of Beirut and other port cities, explains how the Ottoman-led government of Muhammed Ali had opened up to foreigners.  “There was a complete change