From the shareholders' point of view the most important changes are the
substitution of annual accounts for half-yearly ones, and the adoption of
a uniform date for the close of the financial year. In addition to the
many improvements in the direction of clearness and simplicity which the
new form of accounts effected, the following two important changes were
made:--
(1) _All information relating to the subsidiary enterprises of a company
to be shown separately to that relating to the railway itself_
(2) _A strict separation to be made of the financial statements from
those which were of a purely statistical character_
The first of these alterations had become desirable from the fact that
practically all the larger railway companies had, in the course of years,
added to their railway business proper such outside enterprises as
steamships, docks, wharves, harbours, hotels, etc.
One bright morning, in the autumn of 1911, I was summoned to the
telephone by my friend the Right Honorable Laurence A. Waldron, then a
Director of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, and now its Chairman. He
said there was a vacancy on the Kingstown Board; and, supposing the seat
was offered to me, would I be free to accept it? As everybody knows, it
is not usual for a railway manager, so long as he remains a manager, to
be a director of his own or of any other company; so, "I must consult my
Chairman," said I.
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