For Clive and his shareholders it was another triumph: ‘Fortune seems determined to accompany me to the last,’ Clive wrote to his friend and biographer, Robert Orme. ‘Every object, every sanguine wish is upon the point of being completely fulfilled, and I am arrived at the pinnacle of all that I covet, by affirming the Company shall, in spite of all the envy, malice, faction and resentment, acknowledge they are become the most opulent company in the world.’93 To Clive’s immense personal profit, the value of EIC stock climbed dramatically, nearly doubling in value in eight months.
