A Most Deliberate Swindle by Mick Hamer

Author:Mick Hamer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RedDoor
Published: 2017-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

The Greek Adventurer

The long-suffering shareholders in the London Electrobus Company must have choked on their toast and marmalade when they opened their morning post on Wednesday 14 July 1909. For among the envelopes on the breakfast table was a lengthy letter from one D J de Lyann, the editor of a magazine called the Cosmopolitan Financier. De Lyann had a scheme for reconstructing the London Electrobus Company. He was writing to ask for the shareholders’ support and – predictably – their money.

De Lyann said he had been asked to intervene by several subscribers of the magazine who were ‘large shareholders’ in the electrobus company. The company was in temporary financial difficulties, he said. But once these difficulties had been surmounted electrobuses were clearly the future of public transport and ‘your enterprise possesses exceptional opportunities of practically monopolising the passenger traffic in the metropolis’. 1

Only 14 electrobuses were currently on the road, he said, because the company lacked the money to repair them. His solution was to set up a new company, the Reorganisation and Control Syndicate, which under his benevolent supervision would take control of the electrobus company’s assets and provide an immediate injection of cash. The company was paying an exorbitant price for its electrobuses, claimed de Lyann, who further claimed to have an option for cancelling the contract with its suppliers – the Electric Vehicle Company.

After the company had been reorganised it would be able to raise further funds, increase its fleet to 50 buses and pay a dividend of 28 per cent on ordinary shares. All he wanted from electrobus shareholders to reach this nirvana was for them to invest £1 in his syndicate for every £5 of electrobus shares they held.

The shareholders had to make up their minds quickly, however. De Lyann told them that his options for carrying out the scheme expired at the end of the following week and without a reconstruction their shares would be worthless. He boasted that the scheme had the backing of the newest director of the electrobus company Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Mordaunt Fitzgerald. In a follow-up letter to wavering shareholders de Lyann laid it on thick. ‘I am by no means satisfied that all have grasped the gravity of the situation, or indeed appreciate the efforts that are now being made by Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzgerald and myself on their behalf.’

Truth was scathing about the scheme. ‘In the long run people who have refused to have anything whatever to do with this Reorganisation and Control Syndicate will, I think, have cause to congratulate themselves upon having thoroughly grasped the situation,’ said the magazine. 2

The figures in the circular were pure fantasy, especially the jaw-dropping claim of a 28 per cent dividend. Who, shareholders might have wondered, was de Lyann? Who were the big shareholders backing this astounding scheme? And why such urgency? The short answer was that de Lyann was the journalistic nom de plume of Demetrius John Delyannis, another con artist working the fringes of the Edwardian financial world. He was already well known to Truth.

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