§ 59. Mr. WELLOCKasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury if he will give details of the share capital representing cable communications only in the various companies within the Communications Company?
Mr. SAMUELThe Communications Company will only acquire physical assets relating to cable communications and shares held by the existing cable companies in companies which carry on communication business. The Merger Company, with the capitalisation of which the Governments are not concerned, intends to acquire all the ordinary shares in the Eastern Telegraph Company, the Eastern Extension Australasia and China Telegraph Company and the Western Telegraph Company. The share 1947 capital and reserves of these companies, according to their latest balance sheets, amount to rather more than £26½ millions, but I have no means of apportioning this figure to purely cable assets.
§ 62. Mr. WELLOCKasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether the proposed annual payment of £250,000 by the Communications Company for the loan of the Government's beam system will be subject to a royalty of six and a quarter per cent. payable to the Marconi Company?