After buying the Scherl newspaper chain in July 1916, Hugenberg announced, at the first meeting of the board under his management, that he had only bought the Scherl corporation to champion annexationist and Pan-German war aims, and that any editor opposed to his expansionistic views should resign immediately, before he fired them. Hugenberg's biographer, John Leopold, wrote: "This very visible success of the Scherl concern led to the charge that Hugenberg was a war profiteer and an unscrupulous manipulator of the postwar inflation. This was undoubtedly true. During the period from 1914 through 1924, Hugenberg had securely established the basis of his entire syndicate. His business transactions were filled plans to buy and sell shares of different companies, the creation of new corporations as a holding concerns to take various firms, contracts with confidants acting as middlemen and ever-present schemes to avoid taxes. Hugenberg exploited the corporate law, which he knew so well, and utlized his own financial acumen, which had so finely developed, to secure his empire. He knew the rules of the game and manipulated them to full advantage".