This collection of papers covers nearly two decades in the history of the South African newspaper Press, from the early 1950s, when the new National Party government of Dr D F Malan appointed the Van Zijl Commission of Inquiry into the ownership and control of the Press, until early 1970, by which time ownership had become highly concentrated. The collection owes its existence to the fact that Syfrets Trust company acted as secretaries to the Administrators of the Estate of the late Sir Abe Bailey, who were under the chairmanship of Mr Clive Corder of Syfrets, and to the Abe Bailey Trust. Sir Abe Bailey had been a major shareholder in the Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Times and his estate was to become the principal shareholder in South African Associated Newspapers, which was formed in an amalgamation of the RDM and the Sunday Times in the mid-1950s. A record was kept by Syfrets of transactions relating to the newspaper holdings of the Bailey estate and their fortunate preservation of an official of Syfrets, Mr Cooper, and subsequently by Mr Denis Hennessy, has left to posterity a collection of singular importance, not only in the history of the Press but in South African political and economic history generally.