In 1868, the Postmaster-General was given authority by act of Parliament to purchase the undertakings of the telegraph companies and also the interests of the railways in the conveyance of public messages, together with a perpetual way-leave for telegraphic purposes over the properties of the railway companies. Any telegraph company, with the authority of two thirds of the votes of its shareholders, was empowered to sell to the Postmaster-General all or any portion of its undertaking. When the Postmaster-General had acquired the property of any telegraph company, he must also, upon the request of any other company, purchase its undertaking, this privilege being extended also to the railways so far as telegraphs operated by them for transmitting public messages were concerned. The price paid for the Electric and International, the British and Irish Magnetic, and the United Kingdom Telegraph Companies was fixed at twenty years' purchase of their net profits for the year ending 30th June, 1868. In the case of the United Kingdom Telegraph Company additional sums were to be paid for the Hughes type-printing patent, for the estimated aggregate value of its ordinary share capital as determined by its highest quotation on any day between the 1st and 25th days of June, 1868, for compensation for the loss of prospective profits on its ordinary shares, and any sum that might be determined as loss for its attempt to establish a uniform shilling rate. Every officer or clerk of the companies who had been in receipt of a salary for not less than five years or of remuneration amounting to not less than £50 a year for not less than seven years, if he received no offer from the Postmaster-General of an appointment in the telegraphic department of the Post Office equal in the opinion of an arbitrator to his former position, was entitled to receive an annuity equal to two thirds of his annual emolument if he had been in service twenty years, such annuity to be diminished by one twentieth for every year less than twenty. Those entering the service of the Postmaster-General were entitled to count their past continuous years of service with the companies as years in the service of the Crown.