Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook Exchequer), rewarded Aitken with a peerage and, briefly, a Cabinet post as Minister of Information. Post-war, the now Lord Beaverbrook concentrated on his business interests. He built the "Daily Express" into the most successful mass-circulation newspaper in the world, with sales of 2.25 million copies a day across Britain. He used it to pursue personal campaigns, most notably for tariff reform and for the British Empire to become a free trade bloc. Beaverbrook supported the government of Stanley Baldwin and that of Neville Chamberlain throughout the 1930s and was persuaded by another long standing political friend, Winston Churchill, to serve
Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook stock transfers leading to the conglomeration of the cement plants, resulting in much criticism of Aitken, as well as accusations of price-gouging and poor management of the cement plants under his company's control. Aitken sold his shares, making a large amount of money. Aitken had made his first visit to Britain in September 1908, and when he returned there in the spring of 1910, in an attempt to raise money to form a steel company, he decided to make the move permanent, but not before he led the underwriting, with a preponderance of British money, of an amalgamation of smaller