THE JOBBING SYSTEM OF THE LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE: AN ORAL HISTORY

Interview No. 17: Marcus Colby. 

Interviewer: Bernard Attard

W. I. Carr Investments, London Bridge, SE1: 26th March 1990.

Tape 1, side 1

BA:  Could you first tell me, Mr. Colby, where and when you were born?

MC:  I was born in Woking, on November 20th, 1903.

BA:  Who were your parents?

MC:  My parents were Dr. F E A and my mother was Mrs. [E.A. nee Bryant]

BA:  So did your family have any City connections?

MC:  None at all.

BA:  And where did they send you to school?

MC:  I went to Charterhouse and Christchurch, Oxford, where I got an honours degree.

BA:  What did you read?

MC:  English Literature.

BA: And did you have any plans for what you would do with your life?

MC:  No.  My father had three sons and he said to them, 'I'll give you all a first class education and after that it's up to you'.  He was a well-known doctor in Woking and he said to me 'What do you want to do?'  And I said I wanted to go somewhere where I had a chance of making money.  He said 'Well, it's either the Stock Exchange or Lloyds.'   One of his patients at the time was the Chairman of Lloyds, and he said as I hadn't got any capital, it would be better to go into the Stock Exchange.  We lived next door to a very well-known stock jobber and he got me a job with a small firm called Halfhead King where I went in April 1926, having come down from Oxford in June '25.

BA:  What had been the attitude to places like the Stock Exchange among your peers, for example, either at school or University?  Was it regarded as a respectable place in which to make one's career?

MC: Yes, absolutely.  They all thought it was a very good place to go to.

BA:  And what had been the attitude to money in your family?  You said that your object was to make money.

MC:  Well, of course, my elder brother became Governor of Nyasaland and my other brother was an author, but of course they both died young of cancer, and I am here, very lucky to still be going.

BA:  So you went in the Stock Exchange in 1926?

MC:  April 1926 really, and I was authorised in July 1928.

BA:  Could you describe the first firm that you worked with?  Was it a small firm? 

MC:  It was a very small firm.  The two partners had a desk each, they had a top hat on their desk.  They had no stock exchange staff, and if somebody rang them up or they rang somebody up, they would put the top hat on, go down and do the deals and the senior partner would then write out the contracts.  The office expenses in toto (I know it's a different type of pound) were £3,600 a year.  In those days that included everything, all salaries, and of course the rent was 6d a square foot; I've never forgotten that.

BA:  And what kind of things did they have you doing when you first started?

MC:  I was just a clerk (I don't think this should be on the record) but I got very friendly with a chap called Mobbs at Oxford, whose father started Slough Estates and he was also very big in the motor trade.  He was also a top class bridge player - he was Chairman of the Portland Club - and he gave these very big weekend parties at a house about two miles from where my parents lived, and everything was betted on.  About six weeks before the English Ford Company was floated in 1928 I went there for the weekend and Edsel Ford was staying there and I drew him at bridge.  He was playing very high stakes.  I of course was playing very low ones and he was carrying me.  We had every card in the pack and he made a hell of a lot of money, I really mean big money.  It didn't make any difference to him.  He said to me 'What do you do for a living?'  And I said 'I'm struggling in the Stock Exchange, I can't get anywhere, I'm still in the office', and he said 'Well the English Ford Company is being floated in six weeks' time, and if you apply for them you can get them in full.  It was a public issue of course.  I said, 'well unfortunately I've got no money, would it be alright if I tell my firm?' He said 'yes'.  They went for 30,000 at a pound, which was a lot of money, of course in those days and they sold them at I think 11/- premium.  I was immediately authorised, and that's how it happened.  I got a lot of business in the Fords, because Noel Mobbs had given all his agents throughout the country a 1,000 shares and I got all the selling of that.  That really started me off in a way, because I did a lot in Fords ever since then during that time in the thirties.  Of course he was Chairman of Slough Estates and I got quite a lot of business from them.  I was beaten into being broker to Slough by a very well-known bridge player but I was broker to one of his other companies called United Motor Finance, which became Mercantile Credit and I think - one of the banks now, is it Lloyds Bank?  So that was all lost. That's how I really started, it's quite interesting, pure luck.

BA:  When you were authorised you were then entitled to go into the House?  Do you have any early recollections of what that was like, going into the House?

MC:  Yes I do, it was just as it was for the next thirty-odd years, really, there were just brokers' stands and you got friendly with people and you dealt with them.  I had one or two particular firms whom I was very friendly with and of course I used to deal for them as well; I used to do a lot of their personal dealings for two or three of the firms.

BA:  And how long was it before you were taken into the partnership?

MC:  What happened was, they were taken over by Laurie Milbank, this small firm and (I wouldn't like to put this on the record) the eldest son of the previous firm, the firm that was taken over, had left school at 16, and by the time I got there he was over me.  He was senior to me.  They were awfully mean that family and I couldn't stand being with them all the time.  When the manager came in with Laurie Milbank, Christmas 1932, he said 'I've come to give you your Christmas bonus' and he handed me two one pound notes.  So I handed them back to him and said 'I think somebody has probably deserved these more than I have' and gave notice to Sir John Laurie.  I was getting £250 a year as a senior dealer, which was quite a fair salary in those days.  Anyway to cut a long story short they offered me a £1000 a year to stay and God knows what else and when I said I wasn't interested, you ought to have seen his face.  Anyway there was a chap in the Stock Exchange called Heseltine, who said to me 'If ever you want a job I'll give you one,' I went to him and I said 'do you still want to give me a job?'  He said 'when do you want to start?'  I said 'anytime, in about three week's time'.  I said, 'Are you going to pay me anything?' and he said '£400 a year', and that's how I started.

BA:  What was the name of his firm?

MC:  Walter Walker that was.  He was a very clever chap actually, very very astute.  He started a firm called Telephone Rentals, and he said to me, 'If you've ever got any money put it into land.'  He bought 1200 acres about two miles east of Basingstoke, built a house and built a drive about half a mile long and the whole thing stood him in for £25,000; they were good pounds.  He was a very good golfer.  He had a hole, about 180 yards on his estate, a beautiful green and everything, and you knew for a fact that he was probably going to get a two, because he was a very good golfer.  And you always had to go and have a go at him; he always put money on, and he always won.

BA:  The Stock Exchange had just come through the Depression at this point?

MC:  Yes, it was in the middle of a Depression of course.

BA:  What were conditions like at this time?

MC:  Well there was very little doing, and everybody was fairly depressed.  The Daily Express had a great campaign to open the Stock Exchange on a Saturday, and this happened the Saturday before we went off the Gold Standard.  When we went off the Gold Standard, all the jobbers in the Gilt-Edged market were insolvent, Halfhead who was in Laurie Milbank, who was Halfhead King, was on the committee with the Bank of England to solve the position, which they did of course.  But when we went off the Gold Standard, the foreigners were selling Gilts on the Saturday when we opened, and in those days if the Gilt market went up or down a sixteenth there was almost a crisis.  And it went down about five points.  It had never happened before, and there was a terrific thing; there was a kind of moratorium in the Gilt market in those days for a bit, and the Bank of England stepped in It all came out in the end alright. But actually at that day I believe every single jobber was insolvent in the Gilt market.  They gave up opening it after, I think it was about six times, six Saturdays - and they gave it up.

BA:  Were there many hammerings arising from this?

MC:  I don't think there were over that.  I wouldn't like to guarantee it, but I don't think there were.

BA:  Was it the jobbers who were bearing the brunt of these difficult conditions?

MC:  In the Gilt market yes.  They were all virtually insolvent, all the jobbers, after we went off the Gold Standard.  I don't think the other jobbers were particularly badly hit, because I don't think the market was all that bad if I remember rightly; but it was [in] the Gilts that it happened.

BA:  Was there sufficient business for broking firms and jobbing firms to ...?

MC:  Not really, there wasn't enough - there was very little turnover.

BA:  Were people having to look outside the Stock Exchange for additional income?

MC:  No, I wouldn't have said that; no, I wouldn't have said so.  Then of course it started picking up when the American market started going.  I think the bottom of the American slump was something like 1932, and then things started picking up and there was a lot of business.

BA:  How would you describe the firm that you now joined, Walter Walker?  Was it a very similar firm to the one that you had previously been with?

MC:  Yes, roughly, but bigger, of course - a bit bigger.  Not a tremendous lot bigger.  It's so different from what it is today.  Here they're dealing on somebody else's money, therefore they're not quite so careful as they were in the old days when we were dealing with our own money.  If we had a hundred pound loss it was a kind of disaster.  Here they think nothing of ...

BA:  Did you specialise in any particular stocks?

MC:  No, I did anything that came my way, really.  After the War I'd known the boss of Rensburg very well, in Liverpool, and for about ten years I did all their business in London, and also I met a chap in the War whose firm was in Glasgow.  They were a firm of insurance jobbers in Glasgow and I used to undo their business for them in London.  I did all the Polycell business.  You've probably heard of Polycell, have you?  Well it's a kind of paint filler and it started off with a capital of £500 - that was in '48, and it was sold to the wallpaper company in 1962 for £16 million, which was a lot of money in those days.

BA:  Well thinking about early in your career, would there have been any point that you would have contemplated becoming a jobber, or did it never occur to you?

MC:  No, I never wanted to be a jobber.  I was offered a job in one of the biggest firms in the Stock Exchange which I turned down.

BA: Can you remember which firm that was?

MC:  Akroyd & Smithers.

BA:  And did they approach you?

MC:  They approached me, yes.

BA:  And what were your reasons for turning it down?

MC:  Well, I'd got a good business going.  I've always been a lone wolf, shall I say, and still am, and I didn't want really to be part of a team, if you really want to know, quite honestly.

BA:  And was this early in your career?

MC:  That would have been about - after the war.

BA:  Thinking about the 1930s, how would you contrast the jobbers in that period with subsequently, for example, when the big mergers began to take place?  Was it a very different kind of system?

MC:  I don't think it was all that different.  You dealt with friends all the time, all the way through really; they were personal friends of yours.  Now you lift a phone up and you don't really know who is at the other end of it.  That's the trouble.

BA: Were there a greater number of jobbers in the market?

MC:  Oh, a hell of a lot, I don't know how many there were but there were hundreds, then it was whittled down to about seven, as you know, but there were literally dozens and dozens of two men firms, with, I should say, damn' little capital.

BA:  The fact that there were hundreds and hundreds, did that make any difference to the kind of things you could do as a broker?

MC: Not really, although of course, you had more ... I was inclined to deal with the big jobbers, people like Ferguson Clark, Hadow & Turner and Kitchin Baker Mason, all that lot.  But you know, occasionally I dealt with the small firms if it suited them or it suited me.

BA:  In what circumstances would it suit you to deal with a smaller firm?

MC:  Well, they were making the wrong price, I suppose.  I was a very keen dealer and I knew the market extremely well, and jobbers make different prices.  I used to go round the market.  They used to call me an arch squirt, but there you are.

BA:  I've come across that word 'squirt' before, could you explain for the benefit of the tape, what exactly a squirt was?

MC:  I suppose a squirt was a chap who would go round the market and if he could he'd deal on a choice price. 

BA:  And about how many jobbers would you feel you had to see before you got the touch?

MC:  Well, I suppose, about half a dozen, really.  You see there were about eight - I'm not talking about the Gilt market, I'm talking about the industrial market - there were eight to ten biggish firms, who I would always go around and check the price with.  You see when I was dealing for Rensburg, it was very very competitive and you really had to get your commission out of your dealing, if you understand what I mean.  After one wasn't allowed to deal for the country, they were the jobbers' friend.  Because they didn't know really the touch like I did. They were on the phone and it was very difficult to check on the phone, seven or eight jobbers.  Well they couldn't do it.  They were absolute a bonanza in my opinion.

BA:  So in that case were there also brokers who simply didn't try and get the touch?

MC:  Oh yes.

BA:  And so would they have fairly established relationships with particular jobbing firms that they went to regularly?

MC:  Yes, I think they would.  But you see there were some people in those days - I'm not going to name anybody - who had a friend in the oil market, and say he came down the market with half a dozen orders round the market, he would give his orders to this chap who would go and deal.  There would be two turns, in other words.  There was a chap in our firm who did that but we clamped on that, because it was ridiculous.

BA:  Where did you, as a broker, get your information upon which you either based your advice to client?

MC: Well, of course, it was so different in those days.  If you had a query, you went to see a jobber, and they told you - you kept in touch with everything, really.  It was so much easier.  Now, I don't know what's going on until I read the Evening Standard in the evening.

BA:  And did you try and cover all the markets, or keep a general eye...?

MC:  Yes, all the markets, every one.

BA:  And this didn't feel a particular burden on you?

MC:  None at all, not the slightest no.  I didn't do any big Gilt business until after the War when I dealt for  the Liverpool Building Society; I did a lot then, but of course they've been taken over by somebody and I don't get anything from them any more.

BA:  Again, thinking about the jobbers generally during the 1930s, did they feel as if they were a different breed to the brokers, a different kind of person?

MC:  Yes, definitely.

BA:  How would you describe that?

MC:  It's very difficult to describe it really, isn't it?  There were two different types, entirely.  That's about all you can say.

BA:  Do you feel they came from different social backgrounds?

MC:  No, not the slightest.

BA:  Did they have a different cast of mind?

MC:  I think they probably had a different class of mind.  I think it was probably generated by the fact that they were jobbers.  I don't think they started with a different class of mind - not particularly anyway.  But you can't imagine how different it was in those days.  You see very few firms in the early thirties had any Stock Exchange staff. The partners did all the dealing, like they did in Halfhead King. They just put their top hats on and went down and came back and took it off.  I don't think until I got to Laurie Milbank, where I was dealing ... well of course I was dealing in Halfhead King, but I was about the only office staff, the only floor staff that Halfhead King had.

BA:  Do any particular issues of stock or particular offers of stock stand out in the memory from this period?  For example there was ....

MC:  Well Morris Motors of course, that was the big thing. That was where you could buy them from one part of the firm at I think it was 42/- and sell them at the other half for 47/6 if you wanted to.  I don't think they liked that very much.  That was the biggest I think, probably.  Of course the English Ford company as far as I was concerned was a big issue. But those are the two - English Ford was '28 and I'm not certain when Morris was - you don't know, do you? 

BA:  It was around then I think.

MC:  Yes around then.  Those were the two biggest ones I remember.

BA:  Do you have any particular memories of the day of the Morris issue?  For example I believe there was a great crush of brokers coming in to deal, and there were stories in the Financial Times about brokers coming up and dealing, fainting, recovering, finding the price had changed and dealing again.

MC:  Of course the best story of all ... I don't think it's true, but you can't imagine what the rubber market was like in those days, in the stock exchange, in the rubber boom - it was unbelievable, the crowds; and of course the old story was that one of the elderly chaps died at 10 o'clock in this crush and they didn't know anything about it until half past three when the people went out and he fell down.  I think that's apocryphal.  But you can't imagine what it was like, that rubber boom.  Unbelievable.  Have you heard about it from other people?  

BA:  I've heard it referred to.

MC:  It really was quite fantastic.  You see, I came into the end of the first rubber boom, then there was another one in the fifties. And I think in the 1926 boom, rubber went up to four bob a pound and fell to about 4d.  You can imagine what happened there. And Halfhead had a big connection with the rubber and I went down to Mincing Lane for an hour every day, after I'd been authorised.

BA:  And did you trade?

MC:  Yes, I got orders from people in Mincing Lane.  And he [i.e. Halfhead] was very friendly with Lewis & Peat, who were a big - and I used to have my headquarters there, and I used to phone up the orders to the firm which I'd got down in the rubber market.  But then they all went bust in the end, or most of them.

BA:  In those circumstances when there was a boom, or when prices were fluctuating up and down, did you feel as if you knew what was going on or did you feel that the jobbers were the ones who had the whip hand?

MC:  No, you knew what was going on, more or less, but you know it was very hectic.  Tremendously hectic.  But you just had to push your way in and that was that in those days.

BA: And did you have many jobbers sharing in the business?  Would you have new jobbers coming in because it was an active market?

MC:  I don't think so, no.  If we're talking about the rubber market, there were about ten I suppose, altogether, and they were all tremendously busy.

BA:  Do you recall any of the political crises of the period having an effect on the Stock Exchange?  The Abyssinian crisis in 1935 or Czechoslovakia in '38.

MC:  I remember very well Kennedy being murdered.  That came through at about half past three, just as the American market was opening.  You see there was a very big American market there in Shorters Court - a tremendous American market.  I remember that very well.  Of course I remember the death of King George VI, where they stopped dealing.  But I can't really recall any tremendous crisis.  Munich, I suppose was - I don't think that the market ... I didn't feel a crisis at Munich, although everybody thought war was coming.

BA:  What did you do during the War?

MC:  I was in the RAF from December 1939 until August '45, where having been elderly and having gone in early, I got out early.

MC:  And how did your firm, or most Stock Exchange firms fare during the War when presumably a lot of their partners and clerks went off to fight?

MC: They seemed to fare comparatively well.  I think there was quite a lot of business.  I absolutely divorced myself from the Stock Exchange for the whole time.  I never took the slightest bit of interest in it, but as soon as I got back I was right in the swing.  Because they rang me up as soon as I got back and asked whether I could come up immediately, which I did pretty well and we were tremendously busy.

BA:  At the end of the War you simply didn't contemplate pursuing another career?

MC:  No, no not the slightest.  I had to try and rebuild my business, because a lot of the clients had gone to people who hadn't gone to War.  It's always like that.

BA:  What were conditions like in 1946, '47 a very difficult time economically for the country?

MC:  They were very busy times in the Stock Exchange, very busy times indeed. Although we had a Labour Government, I think probably it didn't make much difference, we were very busy, tremendously busy.

BA:  And was the House essentially the same kind of place that it had been during the thirties, the same customs, the same practical jokes?

MC:  Absolutely.  I can't believe that I was away five years, really.  Impossible.

BA:  How would you have described the Stock Exchange as an Institution, was it a very conservative place? Did it have a particular set of customs that would have seemed quite arcane to the outside world?

MC:  I think it was a pretty closed shop in those days.  There was no gallery or anything and nobody really knew anything about it.  I think the average chap in the street didn't know much about it. It was very much a place for rich clients to dabble around in.  And you see there were an awful lot of very very good private clients in those days who have all disappeared.  Had some very fine private clients - marvellous business.  It's altered tremendously, it's all institutional now as you know and there was practically no institutional business when I first went in there at all.  It was all private clients.

BA: Were there particular markets or areas of the stock market that you would have advised people to invest in rather than avoid?  For example would you have recommended Gilt stocks as opposed to rubber stocks or mining stocks?

MC:  Well of course, I've been 100 per cent against fixed interest, ever since I went into the Stock Exchange and I've never had a Gilt and very few of my clients in those days had them.  Probably one of the - I don't say the cleverest thing I ever did - but one of them: my mother had, not a big trust, but did have a trust.  Everything was in order and my elder brother and I (this was 1947 I think) were the trustees, and I rang him up and said, 'I think this is a ridiculous price on War Loan, I think we ought to sell them and put it into equities.'  And we sold War Loan at 107 3/4s.  That was about the best deal I've ever done in my life, and put the money into first class equities, and of course it saved her life completely.   

Tape 1 side 2

I've never liked the fixed interest market and I've always liked top class industrials.  

BA:  Why is it that you didn't like fixed interest?

MC:  Well I couldn't see that there was much prospect of capital gains over the years and I thought that interest rates were much too low as far as getting any ... when you think people are paying 102 for 2 1/2 per cent stocks, the thing was nonsense.  It was very funny, because then I was quite a big shareholder in P & O and P & O had an enormous lot of War Compensation, which was put into Gilts, and I remember writing to the secretary of P & O and said I thought it was a marvellous opportunity for them to sell all their Gilt-edged stocks, and I believe they did actually.  They had to because they bought new ships.  It was at the time when War Loan was converted into Conversion Fives, and Conversion Fives were some ridiculous price, about 120 or something.  I think they had most of their money in Conversion Fives, and I know they sold it.  I think they would probably have sold it at any time, but I did write to them.  I've been anti Gilts the whole of my career, and I've hardly ever, unless I've had to, bought a Gilt for anybody.  Of course it's paid off.  Because, you take Daltons at 100, what are they in real money terms?  Practically nothing.  Absolute tragedy.

BA:  What would your daily routine have been like?  For example, just after the War.

MC:  Well, I'd get up to the office.

BA:  What time would that be?

MC:  That would be a hell of a lot later than now.  I would say I probably got into the office about half past nine.  And I would have stayed until probably half past five, half past six.  And I'd just go down to the market. We had a light in those days, my light was 267, and if that flashed you went onto the phone and you would get an order from the office.  Otherwise I would ring up my own clients.  I was dealing for the firm of course in those days, and that went on all day.  Just dealing.

BA:  Did you take a break for lunch?

MC:  Oh yes, I took a break for lunch, yes.  But I didn't go to the Savoy like I do now.

BA:  Perhaps I could ask you now some of the more specific questions that I had about the jobbers.  What was the attitude of the brokers to the jobbers?  Did they regard them as people who were there to outwit them and they had therefore to be on their guard, or was it a much more friendly relaxed relationship?

MC:  I think it was a mixture of both really.  One was very friendly with them, but on the other hand, I wasn't very kind to them; but I was very friendly with them.

BA:  What do you mean by not being very kind?

MC:  Well, I wasn't going to give away the turn like some people might have done to your friends.   I treated them all exactly the same, and I wanted to do the best for my client.  That's what happened.

BA:  How would you describe your particular relationships with the jobbers?

MC:  Very good indeed.  I had a wonderful relationship with all the jobbers and when I collected for the benevolent fund in 1948, I got something from every jobber in the Stock Exchange.  I did very badly with the brokers, but I got something from every jobber; it was very hard going.

BA: Did you have a particular technique in actually dealing with the jobbers?

MC:  Not really.  If I had a very large order, too big for the market, I would go to a friend of mine and tell him what I wanted to do - a fellow I could trust 100 per cent, which I could.  Practically all of them in those days you trusted 100 per cent.  You wouldn't trust any of them now.  You'd keep it quiet and they'd probably deal in the end of the day.  I think there was much more trust in those days.  I don't think there's much trust today, compared to what it was.  If you put a diamond necklace on a shelf before the War in a shop, it would be there at half past five.  If you put it there three years ago, it would have gone at five past nine.  That is the difference.

BA:  Was trust very important in actual dealing?

MC:  Very, very important.  They trusted you and I trusted them.  I think that's the answer.  I had a very very good relationship with practically every jobber.  I don't think I ever had a row with anybody, the whole time I was there. But they knew I was a keen dealer and that kind of thing and I think they respected it and I respected them.  They knew that if I dealt they were probably either the best buyer or the worst seller, the cheapest seller.  That was something in those days.  They knew that if I dealt with them probably that they were either making a low price or bidding high.  It helped them.

BA:  Was it very important to you to disguise actually what you were doing?

MC: Yes, it was.  I think it was, really.

BA:  Were you aware of some jobbers being a lot sharper at finding out what your business was?

MC:  Yes, I think there were.  They were a wonderful lot really.  Very friendly with them all, the whole lot, every single one of them.  There were one or two firms that I was ultra friendly with.  You used to know them outside the House very well.

BA:  Well that leads me to my next question, because did you have much contact with the jobbers outside the House?

MC: Yes, I did, quite a few firms.

BA:  Could you describe what form that took?

MC:  You take Ferguson & Clark.  I was very friendly with all the partners in them.  And one of them called Nick Prinsep, he was a tremendous entertainer.  I used to go down at weekends to his house at Pevensey Bay and all that kind of thing.  I was very very friendly with Akroyd & Smithers and always have been, and still am, although they're with Warburg.  You play golf with them or anything like that.  I was a very keen golfer and played tennis, anything, go to their houses - play bridge.  I've always been a great bridge player.

BA:  Did much actual business go on outside of the House?

MC:  Not a lot.  Occasionally you dealt with them.  I used to give a cocktail party at the Savoy every two years, and I used to give a dinner party afterwards and at the dinner party I had one of the partners in Ferguson Clark, who was an insurance jobber, and one of the guests was a chap from Daniel Hendry from Glasgow.  And they dealt in 200,000 Royals (Royal Insurance) over dinner, I remember that, for which I got the commission, I got the broking.  Both sides.  Paid for the cocktail party I should think.

BA:  You've said your relations with all the jobbers were quite friendly, were there cases in which the complete opposite was the case in which brokers really didn't get on with the jobbers?

MC:  Yes I think they were.

BA:  In what circumstances would that occur?  Would it be a question of personalities or unfortunate dealing experience?

MC:  Difficult question to reply to because some people are difficult as you probably know and make themselves unpopular as jobbers I think.  I think that's really what happened.  As far as I was concerned, people knew that I was a keen dealer and they knew that; but some people would blatantly deal at the wrong price with jobbers.  Obviously they got a bad name with the jobbers.  But I never blatantly picked anybody up, you know, I never dealt at the wrong price.  I never dealt at a backwardation or anything like that which some people might do.

BA:  You've mentioned that there were one or two firms that you were particularly friendly with. Were there actually jobbers or firms that one felt one ought to avoid?

MC:  Outside you mean?

BA:  Outside or even in the House.

MC:  No, I don't think so.  No.  There might have been one individual or something like that but not really.  I'm a fairly friendly type of person and I hate having rows with anybody, and I can say very truthfully that I've never a row with a jobber in the whole of my career, which is saying something.

BA:  Were there cases in which brokers became too close to jobbers?

MC:  It's difficult for me to answer that.  I think they probably did, some of them , but I wouldn't like to say that I've got any real reason to say that.

BA:  Well, who are the jobbers who stand out in your memory, either as particularly good dealers, or particular characters in the House.

MC:  I would say that Ferguson and Clark, Akroyd & Smithers.  I was very friendly with Blackwell & Co, they were oil jobbers, and I suppose Kitchin Baker Mason I was very friendly with.  I was friendly with Hadow & Turner, Denny and all those people.  I was friendly with all of them.

BA:  Are there any particular personalities that stand out?

MC:  Well, of course there's Urling Clark, with Ferguson & Clark, and all the partners of course, they were all larger than life.  And Kitchin Baker Mason, there were a lot of people there I knew very well.  And Hadow & Turner, the whole lot of them, really, one knew them all very well indeed.

BA:  Did you find in your contacts with the jobbers that there were different styles and different jobbers had different ways?

MC:  Oh yes, definitely.

BA:  Could you describe some of those?

MC:  It's very difficult isn't it?  

BA:  Or can you recall particular episodes in which some of these qualities were evident?

MC:  Well, not really, it's very difficult off hand to think of anything.  I don't think so.  I used to just deal and that was that.  Occasionally I used to go out and have a bottle of champagne with one or two of them, at half past eleven.   There was a chap called Paul Hepworth with Kitchin Baker Mason; he was a great champagne chap.  I used to go with him and have champagne with him.  But you know I had a very friendly time and a very enjoyable time, I loved the market, I loved being on the floor.  Of course it's all gone out of the window now.

BA:  Did your firm change or evolve during the post War period?  I'm thinking now right through the whole sweep until the early eighties.

MC:  Not an awful lot no, not really.  No I wouldn't have said so.  They got a bit bigger of course, bigger staff.  It was rather funny because there was a girl in Walter Walker who has come here, and they gave her a kind of party after she'd been there twenty years and I said to the Frenchman who owns us, 'It's all very well you know giving her a party for twenty years, I was in the firm thirty seven years before she turned up'.  He didn't know what to say.

BA: Had your client base changed in any way?

MC:  Well it's all got smaller all the time, really.  My heyday I suppose, my biggest earning period, would have been about '52 to about '70.  I did a lot of business for a firm called Shand Kydd & Co (I wouldn't like this to be put down) who were very very big dealers, and they were wallpaper people.  They were very nice.  (This is not for publication) I shall never forget, one of the brothers asked me to come up and see him in Camden Town.  I went up and he said he had £350,000 to invest.  This was about 1960 and we went through it and we spent about three quarters of an hour and as I was going out of the door, the other brother said, 'You might do the same for me Marcus'.  £700,000 to put into the market, in those days, was a hell of a lot of money.  I think it was 1959.  That was probably one of the best days I've ever had. That was the kind of money they had in those days.  It was a hell of a lot of money.

BA:  Again, I'd like to just mention some of the main events in Stock Exchange history or the economic history of the post-war history, just to ask if they have any particular memories connected with the Stock Exchange associated with them, and if you don't then, not to worry.  Do any of the devaluations figure in your experience, the one in 1949....?

MC:  Well of course the Stock Exchange was shut for a couple of days after devaluation, and I think one tried to deal in the street, but one wasn't allowed to deal.  There was a street market after the Stock Exchange closed, you probably know that.

BA:  Right up to the end?

MC:  I should have thought right up to the War, I don't know.  In Throgmorton Street there was a big market.  The American market was enormous in the thirties.  There was a chap called Bates who was a terrific dealer and I think he was making an enormous amount of money.  The last thing I heard about him was that somebody came along and said could I give ten quid they were buying a pub for Bates, who had lost all his money.

BA:  Did you find yourself doing business out in the street?  

MC:  Oh yes.

BA:  Was it any different to inside the House?

MC:  Not at all, except of course that they could see you. In the Stock Exchange you'd get round the pillars and things, they weren't all in one long row.  It was mostly the oil market outside.  Oh yes we used to deal there.  Of course in 1929 I had quite an interesting experience.  Not that it would interest you particularly, but when I was with Halfhead & King.  Halfhead was very friendly with an American firm, and used to do a lot of business in American stocks with this firm.  About four days into the crash, at about 6 p.m., a cable came, and I was the only person left in the office dealing, and it said 'Repudiate all bargains done by a clerk without us telling him to do so'.  So I rang up Halfhead, luckily I found him in and read the thing out to him.  And he said, 'All right go down and sell 5,000 Anaconda, which was a market leader, and 500 Steel.'  Well I rushed down the market, battered my way into Bates and sold the shares and I rang him up and said I'd sold and he said 'Now go and liquidate the 8 shares which are open'.  So I went round to Akroyd & Smithers who had an office... over Shorters Court, and I said to the chap who I knew very well indeed, I said 'I want to sell these 8 stocks, and I don't want you to take an enormous turn out of me, I'll wait till you get the cable back.' You got a cable back in a minute in those days.  And he got the cable back; I gave him a reasonable turn, went back, and by this time it was about a quarter past eight, and rang Halfhead up, and told him what I'd done.  He didn't even say 'thank you'. He said, 'You can go home now.'  I said, 'Thanks very much'.  Well that saved the firm from being hammered, I really do think, because they sold this bear;, it was very clever mind you and I take my hat off to him.  I think they made a profit in the end on the whole thing because we'd cut the losses which were fairly substantial, and they kept the bear going for about a week, and I reckon he was bloody clever.

BA:  Are there any similar experiences that you can recall?

MC:  No that's about the only thing that stands out in my mind.  I shall never forget, he said 'I'd like to take you out to lunch for what you've done'.  We went to Simpsons in the City and he said 'What would you like?'  I said 'Roast beef and some potatoes'. He said, 'Don't bother about potatoes, you can spear one of mine.'  That was the type of chap he was, having saved him from being hammered!

BA:  Leaping forward in time to another very severe recession in 1974.  What memories of the Stock Exchange do you have?

MC:  Very few, it just went down, that's all; the properties all went and there was quite a - but nothing really.  1974 when Burmah Oil went bust and the Index was 150 or something, I thought it was right to buy then, I really did, and we bought quite a lot of stock, very very cheap and it was very very interesting in a way.  I had a cook who came down if I wanted to give a dinner party, and she said to me, 'My mother's left me £10,000, will you invest it?'  This was right at the bottom of the market.   I bought four stocks, top class stocks at absolutely terrible prices. About seven years later she said to me, 'Would you value it,' and I did and it was valued at £110,000, and she promptly retired.  If I'd put it into something rotten, she would have still been around!.  But it is pure luck - having the money at the right time.  You could not go wrong.   When you think I bought Grand Mets at 19p during that time, and Slough Estates at 25p, it didn't matter what you bought.  It was a typical example of having money at the right time,  nothing else, not being clever or anything, you could not have gone wrong, as long as you didn't go into Gilts. 

BA:  Because there were firms that did go out of business at that time.

MC:  Oh, there were, yes.  There were quite a lot of hammerings, if I remember.

BA:  And what made the difference between a broker who could be successful and keep the business going during the difficult period and the ones that were hammered?

MC:  Well I think that a lot of firms get hammered through bad debts, don't they?  I think you've got to be careful of your clients to start with.

BA:  Well by this stage a lot of the jobbers had disappeared and you were dealing with a much smaller group.  Did this make any difference to you as a broker?  Did you feel that it was any less competitive a system?

MC:  Not really, I don't think so.  You see the vast majority of the numbers of jobbers were two-men firms, who had very little capital and they were really not much good to you really.  They wouldn't take you on probably over 1,000 shares anyway, so really they were ignored, as far as I was concerned.  Even when there were God knows how many, I think there were, probably all through the Stock Exchange, not more than 20 firms that I would deal with.

BA:  What kept the smaller firms going when they were around?

MC:  Well I think they punted around on their own, most of them.  They had their friends I suppose. Well you can see they all disappeared eventually, when the competition got a bit better.

BA:  So in that case were there different types of business going on in the Stock Exchange even in the thirties, there was the better class of business involving the large jobbers, the real market makers, and then there were the small firms.

MC:  Yes, I think there was.

BA:  Was this the same with broking firms, the firms dealing in different kinds of business?

MC:  I think it was in a way.  There were Gilt-edged firms to start with, people who just dealt in Gilts only, rather like Mullens, and those people.  They might have dealt in other stocks, but 90 per cent of their business was Gilts, because they were the Government broker.  And Pember & Boyle, they were practically all Gilts.   All these firms, these wonderful firms, have all disappeared;  the biggest disaster that's ever happened, in my opinion.

BA:  Well as we draw through the seventies, did you, were you still going into the House to deal...?

MC:  Yes I was on the floor of the House, last man to leave I should think.

BA:  Well thinking of the perspective from the floor of the House, did you as a broker, dealing day in and day out with the jobbers, feel that there was a strain on single capacity that ....

MC:  I didn't at all.  Not the slightest.  I think we wouldn't have had these fluctuations if we'd had jobbers - if nothing had happened.  We all thought the cake would be about 100 times bigger than it is, but it's no bigger.  You see what annoyed me was that having been on the Floor since 1928 my advice was never asked by any of these people who were doing all these things and had never been near the Floor.  That's the thing that riled me and other people.

BA:  What would you say had been the strengths of single capacity?  Again, thinking about your actual experience in the Stock Exchange.

MC:  Well I think it was - it might not have been so easy to deal large then, as it is now, but as far as I was concerned I never had any difficulty in dealing in any form whatsoever, however big or small my orders.  Now I do.  

BA:  So does that mean the market was always liquid, you could always go in and there was always a price?

MC:  You could always deal, it was the best market in the world.

BA:  Would you say it had any weaknesses?  You've mentioned the fact that occasionally it was difficult to deal in size.

MC:  Well I don't think it had any real difficulties.  Out of the way stocks, obviously, but it was difficult to deal in.  But you can't deal in them now.  But the normal blue chip stocks you could always deal in any number you liked, as long as you were careful about it. 

BA:  A concluding question.  Looking at the jobbing system from the broking side, what would you say it took to be a successful jobber?

MC:  Well I think you had to have a fair amount of capital.  You had to be 100 per cent honest and you had to have the wits really of somebody perhaps down in Petticoat Lane; that kind of mentality, really.  There are people who come from Petticoat Lane, who made very good jobbers, and that's the mentality you want as a jobber.  That of course wasn't there quite so much when I first went in.  It was a much more gentlemanly affair, and it's gradually got 100 per cent more competitive the whole time.

BA:  Good, I think we can finish there.  Thank you very much.