Today marks 50 years since the first edition of Business Times in 1966. The previous week of that year, the Sunday Times published an announcement of "a new service to the public and to the business community".The first edition was six pages and carried "news and personality reports on South African industry, commerce, finance, mining and economic growth".The editor was Stephen Mulholland, who said this week that he had suggested to the "late, great" Sunday Times editor Joel Mervis that the newspaper should emulate London's Sunday Times by adding a full-scale business section."Mervis was enthusiastic. However, the board of directors of the holding company, South African Associated Newspapers, were adamantly opposed."Led by the managing director, the very decent and charming but ineffectual Leycester Walton, they forbade Mervis to embark on this venture."Believing it would damage the Financial Mail brand, which SAAN also owned, the board opposed the move, but "Mervis simply defied them"."He told me to go ahead. I had one employee, John Spira, an industrious type with good contacts and an eye for news. We called the new section Business Times so as not to clash with the other little rag."News was our lifeblood, and we were pretty good at it. Mervis started to steal our stories for the main paper, often as the page one lead, rated by Mervis as the holy of holies. We carried some comment, but we were passionate about the news, delighted each Monday when other media chased our Sunday stories," Mulholland said."By January 1967, we had generated so much new advertising that we were launched as a separate section including the lucrative personnel advertising. However, our editorial 'hole' was based solely on the advertising we were able to draw. We grew to a staff of 14 and generated many tens of millions for the group. Bless you, Joel."..