later to lump
together rather crudely as "Ministers Gambling in Marconis."

A. On April 17--roughly a week after the luncheon--Rufus Isaacs
bought 10,000 of Harry's shares at L2. He made the point later that
buying from Godfrey would have been improper as Godfrey was director
of a company with which the Government was negotiating, but that it
was all right to buy from Harry who had bought from Godfrey. (Harry
having paid only L1.1.3 was willing to let Rufus have them for the
same price. But Rufus thought it only fair to pay the higher price.
This is all the more remarkable because only a week earlier he had
thought these same shares bad value at roughly half the price he was
now prepared to pay.) Of his 10,000 shares, Rufus immediately sold
1000 to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, and 1000
to the Master of Elibank, who was chief Whip of the Liberal Party
then in office. It is to be noted that no money passed at this time
in any of those transactions: Rufus did not pay Harry, Lloyd George
and Elibank did not pay Rufus.

Nor did the shares pass. Indeed the shares did not as yet exist, as
it was not till the next day, April 18, that the American Marconi
Company authorised the issue of the new capital. On the day after
that, April 19, the shares were put on the market at L3.5.0. That
same day they rose to L4. In the course of the day Rufus Isaacs sold
700 shares at an average price of L3.6.6, which on the face of it
looks like clearing L3000 more than he had paid for all his shares
and still having 3000 shares left. But he explained later that there
had been pooling arrangements between himself and his brother, and
himself and his two friends: so that the upshot of his day's
transactions was that he had sold 2856 of his own shares, and 357
each for Lloyd George and Elibank.* The triumvirate therefore still
had 6430 shares of which 1286 belonged to Lloyd George and Elibank.

[* Rufus' explanation boils down to this: he and Harry had arranged
that whatever either sold in the course of the day should be totalled
and divided in the proportion of their holdings. Rufus sold 7000
shares, Harry 10,850: a total of 17,850. Rufus had taken 1/5 of
Harry's 50,000 shares, so one-fifth of the shares sold were allotted
as his--i.e. 3570. Lloyd George and Elibank had each taken 1/10 of
Rufus', therefore each was considered to have sold 357.]

On April 20 these two sold a further 1000 of their 1286 shares at
L3.5/32