A 2.5pc increase in market share after the merger would put another £40m in the company coffers.

Brent Redstone also charged that his father improperly used company coffers to satisfy personal obligations.

James John Hagerman joined the Midland in 1885, refreshing the company coffers with his mining fortune.

Field supervisors and contractors also found ways to plunder the company coffers.

Not so with Mr. Causey; there are no secret bank accounts, no hidden streams of cash flowing from company coffers into his pockets.

"We're working on something with cocoa that would bring a lot of money into company coffers," he said, declining to elaborate.

The word within the venture capital community is that less than $30 million of that sum went into the company coffers.

And the added money in the company coffers earns dividends.

Trading once again was manic, millions of dollars cascaded into the company coffers and research began.

And "borrowing" from company coffers clearly is, even if the money is repaid.