Jabez Balfour as Liberal candidate in Croydon at the general election but lost to the Conservatives. He also stood unsuccessfully for the Liberals at Walworth in 1886. In 1880 he was appointed chairman of the Northampton Street Tramways. Together with City financiers Leopold Salomons and Sir John Pender, Balfour founded the investment underwriting firm the "Trustees, Executors and Securities Insurance Corporation, Limited" in December 1887. In 1892, he was at the centre of a scandal over the failure of a series of companies which he set up and controlled, starting with the London and General Bank and culminating in the Liberator Building
Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge in 2012, the case was described as a "$2.5-million suit" and Bower said, "How can a convicted fraudster find a jury who will say that his reputation has been damaged by a book that says he's a fraudster?" A passing reference in the book to the British businessman, pornographer, and publisher Richard Desmond led to Desmond unsuccessfully suing Bower for libel in 2009. Desmond argued that the description in the book that he was "ground into the dust" when he had published an apology after Black had threatened to sue for libel had weakened his reputation. Notes References Conrad and