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

Interview No. 25:  John Brooks

Interviewer:  Bernard Attard

17th May 1990

Tape 1 side 1

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

JB:  I was born in London in March 1937.

BA:  And who were your parents?

JB:  Ronald Brooks, who ended up as Chairman of the Commercial Union, and my mother's maiden name was Payne, Iris Payne.  They married I suppose in 1930 somewhere.

BA:  Did your family have a longstanding involvement in the City?

JB:  Yes, the Brooks originally were tea merchants, essentially from Ceylon.  They had a tea company.  And I think originally there were about eight small insurance companies that got together and were originally formed into the Commercial Union of which one of the Brooks family companies was one, hence our relationship with Commercial Union.

BA:  Did you have any brothers or sisters?

JB:  Yes, I have an elder brother and sister.  My brother works in Kleinwort Benson and my sister is married and a housewife.

BA: Had your brother originally been a banker?

JB:  No. He never worked in the family business because it was running out of steam, the tea merchant side of it, and father never thought it would be enough work for any of us to go in and do.  So my brother went straight into - it was Robert Benson Lonsdale, and then they were merged with Kleinworts, so he's been in the merchant banking world all his life.  I went straight from National Service into the Stockbroking world.

BA:  Where had your parents sent you to school?

JB:  I went to Eton which I left in 1955, and then National Service for two years.

BA:  What had been the attitude to a career in the City, or more specifically a career in the Stock Exchange among your peers at school?  What would they  have felt about that?

JB:  In the 1950s and early 60s I would think the majority of people at the school were going to end up somewhere in the City.

BA:  And people didn't really differentiate between different types of activity in the City?

JB:  Not really at school, I don't think, no.  It was just, you were probably just going to end up in the City; you didn't actually know what part of the City, or whatever, but that was probably where you were going to end up.

BA:  Had you already made a major decision at that stage, towards the end of your school education, what you'd like to do as a career?

JB:  No, I hadn't; I was a washout! I had no idea what to do.  Because there was two years of National Service, one had a bit of additional time to consider and talk to people and find out what were the options really.

BA: Which firm did you join?

JB:  I joined Hoare & Co.

BA:  And how did that happen?

JB: That was through a friend of the family who worked in Hoare & Co and he was kind enough to offer me a job.  

BA:  Could you briefly describe the different stages in your career with Hoare & Co from, if you were working in the office, whatever you were doing in the office, through blue-button and so on?

JB:  Certainly.  I joined in September 1957 and started off in the messenger department for a month which was literally just walking around the City with a fairly senior messenger to a) find ones way round the City, discover where most of our major clients' offices were; also a general education in where the pubs were and that sort of thing.  And then after a month of that I had probably two months going round the general office business departments, transfers, bearer department, accounts all that sort of thing.  I think I probably joined Hoare & Co and they were expecting me always to go down to the market as a dealer.  So they then sent me down to the box in the Stock Exchange as a blue button. I did that for about six weeks and then I was sent up to Edinburgh to work for British Assets Ivor & Syme for three months, which was really just experience and seeing the other side of stockbroking, how a client works, the ideas they're given, the sort of information they want etc. etc.  I had three months up there.  Then I came back and continued as a blue button on the floor of the Stock Exchange.  I can't remember exactly but I should imagine I was a blue button for about 18 months, two years and then became a dealer.  I think I became a member of the Stock Exchange in 1962/3, one could check that.  I then continued dealing and became senior partner dealer in about 1968 when my boss retired, and then I remained as senior partner dealer - or senior dealer being a partner; not senior partner of Hoare & Co - from then right through until about 1984 when Big Bang was looming.  We'd gone through a merger with John Govett and become Hoare Govett and then sold 29% of ourselves to Security Pacific in 1983/4 I think it was.

Then with Big Bang approaching and obviously considerable change going to happen to the dealing end of the Stock Exchange, I became instrumental in selecting a small jobber to purchase which was C T Pulley, and to help them expand from a very small base through 85/86 to becoming one of the - they were never accepted as the equal of the first six, there was always the five and then there was Pulley after them.  There was quite a lot of opposition to Hoare Govett building them up, or assisting Pulley in becoming large.  Because obviously other jobbers felt that we were favouring Pulley and showing them our business first, which wasn't true.  Obviously there were one or two occasions when we were able to help them and they were able to help us.

And then as we approached Big Bang and we were having to go on to computer screens and all that sort of thing, I came out of the market and became Managing Director of Hoare Govett Securities which was the broking and the jobbing arm put together, on the administration side of it.  I had to try and organise computers and screens and get the experts to produce what we wanted, rather than what they felt that we wanted, and build a dealing room and get the telephone system all correct for the salesmen.  All the fairly boring routine stuff, which had to be done within a set time limit, which was quite testing.  And then in the meantime Peter Meinertzhagen remained in charge of the sales and overall trading - the actual physical business side of it.  We then continued with myself in charge of the admin and him in charge of the actual commission business, through until 1988 when I retired in the summer.

BA: How would you describe the firm when you joined in the mid-fifties?

JB:  It had about 70, 80 people in it.  I think it was looked upon as one of the best firms, built up by Kit Hoare.  Certainly it had a very good new issue business with a list of really top class companies such as ICI, Distiller, Vickers.  We had a very good reputation for being able to raise money for these companies.  We certainly had some bumpy rides but we never in fact cancelled an issue, although at one point I know that we were stuck.  There was a bank rate fuss in 1960 ...  might have been late fifties, 57.  I know that we had a large fixed interest issue - I think for Vickers - going on at the time.  And Bank Rate changed in the middle of it, which put everything absolutely in a complete state.  We were strongly recommended by everybody that we should cancel the issue and we actually said 'no' we would stand by it.  We went for it, we got through it and [got] quite a lot of brownie points from the City generally for sticking by what we'd said we could do.  I think even in those days, obviously there was Cazenove, and Rowe & Pitman and ourselves were probably looked upon as the three top firms.  Cazenoves were probably always looked upon as number one; Rowe & Pitman and ourselves changing.  And certainly in terms of the amount of business we were doing, it was even stephen; one year Rowpit would be number 2, one year we'd be number 2; we were all very much on a par, all with a very good list of clients.

BA: Did you have much in the way of a research department during the earlier stage of your career with the firm?

JB:  We were probably the first firm actually to push research. We started a thing called Datastream, which must have been in the late fifties, early sixties, which was a research based computer system, very much ahead of its era really.  And this entailed having, building up, a substantial research department, and also a substantial computer boffins area.  So in the early fifties, no we didn't have very much of a research effort, it was probably a man and a dog.  But from about the mid-fifties, or end fifties onward, we had a gentleman called Bill Benton who was very much instrumental in the research side in setting it up and saying that we really ought to take research rather more seriously.  And then of course Graham Blease came in on the Datastream side to set that up.

BA:  Well let me shift the focus onto your career again and ask you what your first contacts would have been with the jobbers during your career, jobbing clerks as well as jobbing dealers.

JB:  Really one's first contact were as a blue button, where one was basically a general dogsbody and you kept out of the way of the senior men on the jobbing pitches. It was really a matter of getting to know which jobbers dealt in what.  There was a famous little book called "Squirts' Guide" in which you could look up any stock and it would tell you who the jobbers were who dealt in that particular thing.  It took quite a lot of getting to know who dealt in what. You could have anything up to eight, nine or ten jobbers dealing in the same stock.  A lot of them would have only been interested in dealing in very small amounts.  There would probably be three or four jobbers who would take you on in an institutional type of amount.  But really it was getting to know a) where these jobbers' pitches were, b) who dealt in what and c) it was getting to know the jobbers' blue buttons and junior dealers, who, if one was going to remain in the business, one was going to grow up with.  It was very important, or in my view it was very important to have a good personal relationship with your opposite number, be you a broker or a jobber.  Because if you actually hated each other you weren't going to be any great success as a dealer. 

BA:  What was one's attitude to the jobbers at that stage?  Did you regard them in a sense as the opposition, or were they people who you cooperated with and  collaborated with?

JB:  No, I think in the early stages, one hadn't got round to the thoughts of competition or perhaps greed, or indeed perhaps profitability wasn't under pressure.  You could make a living as a broker, or you could make a living as a jobber, be it a small one or a big one.  And so one hadn't at that stage started looking at one's own profit and loss accounts and wondering, or realising maybe that you weren't making ends meet and we had to start screwing someone somewhere in order that we could make more money.  And I'm sure the jobbers would say they did the same in the later years, in the seventies onwards.  But no, early on you looked upon them really as an essential part of dealing.  As a dealer you got on with some or all of them.  You needed to be able to deal with them.  They were quite helpful.  The spreads in the old days were much closer than they are now.  There were no spread agreements or anything like that and one actually felt everybody was working for the same thing.  And if we could make a little bit of money on commission, and they could make a bit of money on the jobbing turn, that was terrific.

BA:  Were the jobbers regarded as an important source of information on securities and on the way the different markets were doing?

JB:  Yes, they were very helpful in terms of your own companies that you acted for or were broker to.  You could go and talk to the jobber and ask him what had been happening and whether there had been much activity, turnover or whatever.  And they would tell you nine times out of ten obviously.  I'm sure occasionally there could be a conflict where they'd been nobbled by somebody who maybe was trying to build up a stake or something and you couldn't really expect them to come and tell you.   Equally they would often volunteer information which would be useful to the company or to us as brokers to the company, saying that there is a big buyer in, maybe just an investment buyer or whatever, or there's been no trade in this one for a long time and suddenly were seeing quite a lot of interest.  Purely market information.  But it's quite useful to know, and it's sometimes an early warning sign that there's a predator around;  not so much in those days because there wasn't the frenetic takeover activity that there subsequently happened in the late seventies eighties.

BA: Where did one learn one's skills as a broker-dealer?

JB: The older dealers in one's own firm.  Some were good, some were not so good.  But the good ones were always prepared to give advice.  In fact initially you weren't allowed to do the big business.  You started off as a private client dealer, or country broker dealer, or something like that, doing small orders, which you probably couldn't really get into trouble doing. If you had a bigger order, certainly in our firm you would consult with the senior dealer and say 'look, I've got this one I'd rather you did it', or 'shall I have a go?' and if they say 'yes have a go', you might say, 'I thought I'd go and try so and so, and do this and that'.  And they'd either agree with you and say that's the right thing to do or they'd say, 'I wouldn't do that, why don't you try doing something else?'  Purely experience and practice at it. 

BA: Were you specialising in any particular markets?

JB: No, we in our firm didn't specialise.  Some firms did have dealers who, you know - that chap does breweries, that chap does chemicals, or whatever. We in fact didn't. We had dealers who specialised in dealing for clients, for the merchant banks, who have always been fairly active traders and have their own dealing department. We had designated dealers who would do all Kleinwort's business or all Morgan Grenfell's business, because the Merchant bank liked talking to one chap on the floor.  And we had other institutional dealers who would do any institutional business for the institutional sales.  They would know there were four people and you could ring any of those four and they would deal in any stock that is required.  We specialised in as much as we had separate dealers for gilts obviously, and for fixed interest and I think for investment trusts, which were slightly different animals each.

BA:  So for the private client business when you were first starting off, were you dealing in general British equities?

JB: Yes, we were always a nearly completely UK orientated firm in terms of what we were dealing in.

BA:  And in handling the smaller bargains at that stage, would you check your price with all the jobbers in that particular market, or did you only go to the ones who handled the smaller business?

JB:  You'd probably go to the smaller jobbers for the smaller business and you might check the price with one, possibly two others.  But if you're dealing in 200 shares and you deal a halfpenny wrong, it's not actually the end of the world.  And also it depends on the volume.  You can have a terrific volume of private client orders coming in and you physically haven't got time to go and check all the prices because all day you're doing small bargains and as soon as you come back to the box to report them you're given another great wad of them.  But you'd certainly check the price once, if not twice.

BA:  How did you find the jobbers' attitude to you as a younger dealer? For example when you went up to a pitch, who would you go and talk to?  Would you go and talk to their authorised dealer or would you go talk to the member dealer?

JB: It would depend on the sort of bargain that you've got or what you actually wanted to talk to them about.  Basically, as an ordinary institutional dealer you would probably go to maybe a member dealer, because most of the jobbers were members anyway.  But you wouldn't go to the senior boss man.  You'd go to someone in the middle, either a young one on the way up or a middle-aged one. You were actually treated terribly well by the senior jobbers.  They knew always within the broking firms, who was liable to be doing the institutional business.  It was in their own interests to encourage the broker dealers.  If one thought the boss was a jolly nice chap you'd actually go and see him if you'd got a problem.  But they were actually extremely nice and they were very helpful.  But I think it was all part of the 'back to the people' business, that it is essential to get on and it was in their own interests that they encouraged the young institutional dealers.

BA:  Did you find, again I suppose with reference to your earlier days, that there were individual jobbers that were particularly difficult to deal with - they'd try and open you or they'd never quote a reasonable size or the size that you'd want to make it in?

JB:  Yes, there were one or two who one found slightly more difficult than others.  But, in my view, they were normally the senior partners perhaps of one or two firms, slightly the exception rather than the rule, who one was a little bit frightened of and they were a little bit aloof.  They would deal with you, but you'd ask the price, and get a price and that was that.  And in those circumstances one probably didn't go to them because there were two or three other ones who you knew you could go to, who would actually be quite helpful.  But really it's all personalities actually.

BA:  Did you have any particular disasters during your early dealing career, or did you feel you had any particular successes?

JB:  Plenty of both, I think!  It was difficult to measure disasters or successes in terms of dealing or jobbing.  A success is if you manage to buy 100,000 ICI shares a halfpenny cheaper than perhaps the chap round the corner.  It's pretty small beer really, but if you manage to do that you feel quite pleased with yourself; but this is a pretty minor achievement.  I think more one has: suddenly your heart sinks to your boots in things like new issues, or the rump of an issue or something; where in the sixties and seventies, this put-through and all that sort of things, you know that there's half a million shares left over as a rump of a rights issue.  You know that upstairs your salesmen have got buyers for a million at least, and so you basically want the whole half million.  And you have to go to a jobber or to all the jobbers who deal in that particular stock in that particular issue and you have to talk to them and find out if they want any shares, and you hit the first one who says, 'yes, I want all of them plus more'.  Your heart sinks.  Because you know you're not going to get it right with the jobbers, you know you're not going to get it right with your own firm, and you're absolutely stuck.  Because you've then got to try and talk your way out on one side or the other, or come to a compromise, which you still know is not going to satisfy anybody.  Then you go away and you think, 'have I made a nonsense of that, or how could I have done it in another way to achieve what I was actually trying to do?'  It's much more: you have a plan and it doesn't go according to plan, those were the disasters!

BA:  Can you recall any particular example of that, not necessarily going into names if you didn't want to?

JB:  Yes, the first disaster was a rights issue in what is now Coates Viyella, it used to be Carringtons I think - or Carrington Viyella.  This was either when I'd just become - no I think my boss had gone on holiday so I was in theory in charge.  Very new boy in the early sixties. And Wedd Durlacher dealt in - it might have been Durlacher, or it might have been Wedd Durlacher, I'm not sure if they'd merged - anyway Wedd Durlacher dealt in Carringtons.  I went over. I had something like one and a half million shares to sell.  Again, we wanted to buy them back.  We had buyers for most of them, and so I went and saw Wedd and they made me a price in 25,000 or something.  So I said, 'is there a bigger market?'  They made me another price in 100.  And then they got up, I think to a quarter of a million.  So not really knowing the form I said, 'I've got one and a half million to sell, so you obviously have no objection if I put them through,  because we've got buyers'.  Whereupon this gentleman ....

Tape 1 side 2

JB: ... said, right I'll buy those.  So I was in a position where I'd sold one and a half million shares, which I didn't actually have permission to sell, and we wanted to buy them anyway, and I think the problem had been that my phraseology hadn't been correct.  Anyway I was then forced to go back to the firm and say, 'we've had a slight botch here, I've sold that one and a half million and I'm not sure whether I can get any of them back'.  And there was a frightful row about it.  Eventually I was able to get Wedd to compromise a little bit, but that was the first real nightmare that I had, when I suddenly found I had sold all these shares, when I hadn't really got the selling order anyway.

BA:  What was involved in getting them to compromise?  Did you back to them and talk to them on the pitch?

JB:  Yes, I think we'd got their partner dealer to come out to the box and I had to confess that I'd made a complete cock-up of it, and was there any way he could salvage a little bit of my future.  As in all these cases, I think, there was a little bit of tongue in cheek when he'd bought the stock in the first place, just to slightly teach me a lesson, but I think we compromised and he probably took a quarter of a million and we took one and a quarter back.  But it was quite a good lesson, because you can get very casual about how you actually approach a deal and this was a good lesson early on in one's career, that you want to actually get it right first time.

BA:  Did you feel that one had to develop a technique in dealing with the jobber in that one had to be careful about what one said?

JB:  Again, depending who you were talking to.  If one was talking to one's own age group who one had grown up with, that was fine, but if you were talking to the senior partners who you would actually be talking to in a situation where you have a rump or something like that, then you did have to be extremely careful, because they were obviously miles more senior than you, and so you were slightly at their mercy.  So you did actually have to work out very carefully what you were going to say, that they couldn't nip in and put a spanner in the works.  

BA:  When did you start doing the bigger business?

JB:  I would think in about 63/4 I started.

BA:  And what kind of business was that?  Was that institutional business?

JB:  It was purely institutional business and new issue business.

BA:  And again, was that across the range of UK equities?

JB:  Yes.

BA: Now again with that kind of business, did you only check your price with particular jobbers, or did you feel that one had to check with virtually all the jobbers in that particular market?

JB:  In straightforward institutional business, which in the early sixties was nothing like the size that people talk about nowadays, there was normally one or two jobbers who were on an even keel as being good in a particular stock, so you would probably reckon to end up with one of them.  I think that in ordinary straightforward institutional business, you would check it in  one, maybe two places, but if all went according to plan and they made the same price, you would probably go to the one you were hoping to deal with last, and if you were lucky, you got the same price or a better price from him.  If not you had to turn round, go behind a pillar and go back to whoever was making the best price.

BA:  Was that something you had to be careful about?  Not offending jobbers because you're not ...

JB:  No, I think the jobbers knew jolly well the situation can change from minute to minute, and if one guy's suddenly done a big bargain he's going to make a different price, and it could go to any of them.  The brokers felt more embarrassed than the jobbers about trying to deal with someone and then finding that he was not making the right price.  In the new issue business or in the takeover business then I think one generally selected ... In a new issue you'd get all the dealers who dealt in that particular issue, you'd get them all into the box and you would deal with them all.  You'd obviously give the big, better dealers more stock than the little ones, but you'd get them all in together.  In a takeover or building a stake, or anything like that, then I think you would select your jobber without checking.  In something like that you'd probably had a day or two's notice that there was possibly a deal coming along, in which case you would be keeping an eye open by looking at prices on boards and you might talk to one chap occasionally, just to see if there was anything going on in that stock.  But you would probably have made up your mind who you were going to deal with by the time you got the order, and then you would get him out to the box and tell him as much or as little as you wanted to tell them.

BA: Would you then be in a situation where you'd be leaving a limit with the jobber who would then accumulate stock and pass it on to you, or sell it on to you?

JB:  Yes, in the early days. I think that's against the rules now, but certainly in the sixties or early seventies, yes, you would take him into the box, or take him out for a drink, and you would say, 'look we want to buy a lot of these', either give him the amount, or give him half the amount, depending how big, and say, 'we'll give X.  Would you like to accumulate them and let me know when you've sold me a quarter of a million?  Or sell me units of a quarter of a million when you've got enough'.  You could do it that way, or if you're building a stake, there's not much point in booking 5,000 shares 20 times a day, so he would accumulate it and then come and offer you a reasonable amount.  And if he couldn't deal at the price that you had said that you could deal at, he'd say, 'I can't sell them to you at 200p or £2 or whatever, you can have them at 205': then you'd go back and decide whether you want to give 205 for them. 

BA:  And was secrecy or security generally well-maintained?

JB:  It should be.  Security was one of the hardest things to maintain, because there were various brokers who might be doing this sort of things, probably the bigger ones, so you were always being watched by other people in the market.  If there seemed to be a buyer always for this particular stock, dealers would find out from other firms and rumours would get round. Your own firm, your salesmen might be talking to the clients and say, 'well, if you ever wanted to sell any of XYZ, do let us know'.  You then find that that client at lunch time is talking to someone and says, 'oh by the way, I think there's a buyer for these'.  It's terribly difficult to keep things secure.  Some people were better than others.

BA:  What would happen when the news did get out?

JB:  Normally other people would come in and buy the  shares which put them up, which meant you couldn't buy any more.

BA:  Was the firm involved in any big contested takeovers of the sixties?

JB:  Trying to think of - can you give me an example?

BA:  Well, GEC and AEI.

JB:  No 

BA:  ICI and Courtaulds.

JB:  We were involved in that, which we failed in, so that wasn't much good!

BA: What happens then, you're unable to build a stake?

JB:  Yes, there were other reasons though for ICI and Courtaulds, weren't there?  I'm trying to think; either the City generally thought it was a bad idea.  I think the defence was too good for us.

BA:  So one simply unravels the arrangement with the jobber?

JB:  There wasn't a great deal of stake building in those days.  You made a bid and you either got it or you didn't.  I think he stake building only came in in the late seventies and eighties.

BA:  Just to revert to the rights issues for a moment, would the jobbers be important to you in deciding the terms of an issue?

JB:  Not particularly, no. What is important is the price of the shares.  Yes, the jobber decides what the price is, but he's not really influential. One would probably talk to the chap and he would tell you that there's not much going on in the stock, or they are quite a good market and there are buyers about which might influence you a little bit, but basically you'd judge what the rights issue is going to be on the price of the shares.  And sometimes you'd get asked to ask the jobber if he can hold a price at a certain level, which is actually a pointless operation, because normally when you're told to do that the new issue department say we haven't any money to buy any shares at that level.  So no jobber's going to hold a price unless he can pass the stock on.  They're useful purely in the general information about that stock at that time and what's going on in it, but I don't think they would be consulted: 'there's a rights issue coming'. I think that would be the last thing you'd try and tell them.  They might find out, but if there is a rights issue probably their first reaction is probably to mark the shares down.

BA:  Were jobbers important in underwriting?

JB:  They were very useful.  Because again the big jobbers took quite substantial amounts of stock.  In the early days they never got enough and probably later in the seventies and early eighties they didn't. Since I should think 84 onwards, with one or two  sticks and bad issues, they've become much more discerning, and now under the new regime they quite often turn it down.  Well that  would have been unheard of in the old days of jobbing.  They would always take the stock even if they knew or feared that it was going to be a bummer.

BA:  When did - let me rephrase that - were put-throughs part of one's activities?

JB:  Yes,  I  think this varied from firm to firm, and perhaps due to the amount of sales, institutional salesmen that each firm employed.  We, I think, were looked upon as one of the firms most likely to do put-through business.  We crossed a great deal of our business.  One could understand the jobbers' irritation at this because it's much nicer for them to get a clean deal and they would be able to make a bit more perhaps out of it.  We'd always done it.  Through the seventies, and when we had the slump in 73/4, and then there was another bad period in 77/78, it became essential really to try and cross as much business as we could so we could get two commissions to at least cover costs if possible, so we did an awful lot of put-through  business.  There was Rule 90, put through.

BA:  Yes, now could you describe to me in yur words what Rule 90 entailed?

JB:  Well, it had possibly a different meaning to different people.  I felt that Rule 90, and my jobbing friends mightn't agree that we were very good at following my interpretation, but I maintain that we always did;  I believe that Rule 90 meant that if you had a line of stock to sell, before you were able to mention it to any of your clients that you were a seller of this, 'might you be interested in buying it?', that you had to go to one jobber, who should be one of the leading jobbers in that stock, and clear a put-through with him i.e. say, 'look, I'm a seller of X. I'd like to try and make a buyer of them. I think the level we should do it is 1.95 to a half.  Would you have any objections and would you want any stock?'  And the jobber might say 'yes I'd like all the stock' or he might say he'd like 100,000 of it.  And we would then try and maybe cut him down and say, 'you don't really want 100,000. Wouldn't 50,000 do?', if one knew that we were almost certain to make buyers.  And you would come to a compromise.  Now where it went wrong, quite often, was that some salesmen thought that if you cleared a put-through and you tried all your buyers and none of them wanted it, that you could then go back to the jobber and say, 'well I'm sorry, we failed, you've got them all', which in my view was plainly unfair, because you'd then covered all the likely buyers.  You couldn't expect the jobber to be on.  There might be a case where he would say 'well, while you're trying I will leave you a firm bid of 1.90, slightly lower, for the lot whether you succeed or  fail'.  Or he might say, 'well I know I've got a buyer of 100,000, he'd left it firm with me so I've got to stuff him', which we couldn't argue with.  But what would then possibly have happened is that one of our salesmen will have jumped the gun before we'd clear the put-through and gone on to his client and said, 'we're about to be a seller of this, might you be interested?' And the chap says, 'I would be very interested.  I'm a buyer through another chap. Give me a minute and I'll get off from the other broker and then I'll take your stock'. The jobber's bought his 100 because he's got a firm  buyer in the book, he goes along to the broker who says, 'funny you've come in to see me.  I was just coming to see you to tell you I'm no longer firm in buying that stock. I've just had the order cancelled'.  And the jobber's stuffed.  His buyer has reneged and is going to come through us.  It shouldn't have happened in the first place because our salesman shouldn't have talked to the client.  This did happen undoubtedly much more often than it should have done.  We dealers down on the floor would always implore the salesmen not to talk to anybody until we had cleared it and I should think nine times out of ten if not ten out of ten, the salesman would go on and say, 'well we're about to get a seller of these'. And then you'd go back and say, 'you haven't told anyone have you?'  'No no, no no'.  But you don't need to say, 'We're sellers of half a million at x.'  All you've got to do is say 'look hang on I think we've got a seller.  I'll be in touch in a few minutes' and you've ruined the market for anyone else.  And this is where it caused the most tremendous amount of aggro, and quite understandably rule 90 was always the bugbear of jobbers and brokers.

BA:  Were there ever situations where the jobber himself, you having opened to the jobber in a sense, the jobber then knowing that there might be a big buyer or seller about, in fact goes and spoils the broker's market?

JB:  The jobber that you've cleared your put-through with, or that you've talked to, I don't think he would ever do it.  There might be another jobber who gets a sniff of the order through a client talking to a broker and saying, 'we've just been offered a line of this'.  It comes round the back through another broker back to a different jobber who might then knock the shares down a bit, because he doesn't want to be stuffed.  And there's no doubt that this used to happen.  If the market price was 200 to 3 and we were doing a put-through at 90 to a half or something like that, there would be one or two spivs who would see the stock from us, would be offered it, they'd buy it and they'd actually be sending another broker in to sell stock against it, so that they'd take a straight 10p out of the market.  So, another jobber might spoil the market or mark the price down.  But the clients actually were pretty naughty and I think brokers were slow to realise quite how naughty some of them were.

BA:  Did you feel your clients had a good grasp of the way the Stock Exchange worked in the way one might be able to use different brokers to serve their own interests, or to make a bit of extra money?

JB:  I think in the old days they did.  The clients had an understanding of the broking and the jobbing world and they felt that they got a reasonable deal out of life and they were happy to let it go like that.  I think what altered the situation was that you started getting performance funds and terrific competition between fund managers .  You got these chaps, if they could make 10p on 25,000 shares very quickly, albeit that it wasn't actually playing by the rules or straight, it was more important to them to make 25p on 25,000 shares and they could go to their boss and say, 'look our performance funds looking good today'.  And that I think is what probably caused the problems.

BA: Did you feel the jobbers appreciated the kind of pressures that you, the brokers, were under from your bigger clients?

JB:  Yes, this is getting much later in the seventies, eighties. I think they could understand that, but I think they were much more concerned at the pressures that they were under, which I think were pretty considerable.  Because they were being invited to deal in larger and larger amounts, go on bigger and bigger risk, were being slightly carved up at every point along the track, either by the customers or perhaps by one or two brokers.  They were seeing very little clean business, which is the business that you've got a chance of making money on.  There was more and more of this put-through stuff going on.  They were under quite considerable pressure, though they were probably making good money despite it.

BA:  Just to revert to the put-through for a moment.  If one's managed to match a buyer and seller and the jobber hasn't wanted to take any of the stock, what's the final step in completing a put-through? Do you go back to the jobber and put the bargain through?

JB:  Yes, you've agreed with him that you can go and place the stock at 195 or five to a half.  What you would normally do, depending on how big it is, if it's very big, you would probably go back to him in ten minutes after you've cleared it and say, 'look, it's going quite well, and we should be able to let you know in another five minutes whether it's all done'; or you go back and say, 'look we're struggling a bit, but it might come alright'.  As soon as it's done you would then go back and say, 'right that's fine, we've done it, can I sell you X at 195 and buy back X at 195 and a half?'  And they say 'fine', and that's it. But you certainly would keep them in touch as it was going on; if it was a vast amount of shares which would obviously take some time to do, then you would just keep them in touch. 

BA: At some stage jobbers decided they were going to take a minimum turn on a put-through.  What was the brokers' feeling towards that?

JB:  My own feeling was that it was useful.  What it amounted to was half our commission, I think.  And that was a nice easy benchmark to go on.  And everybody agreed it and so there were no discussions.  Until that had come in, you'd negotiated: 'I think a halfpenny's right', and they'd say 'no, twopence is right'. You never felt quite that everybody was happy, either the broker felt he'd given too much or the jobber felt he hadn't got enough.  Once [there was] this guideline of half of one commission, then there wasn't an argument or discussion, everyone would appear to be happy.

BA:  What was your feeling towards minimum spreads generally?  I don't know when they first started to appear.

JB:  I think that is what first began to bring a little bit of conflict between brokers and jobbers, when they started having price agreements, spread agreements.  Because it was all due to competition, some jobbers were carving up, or whatever.  But that really is actually what the Stock Exchange [was about]; free enterprise and competition was what it was meant to be.  The moment you start bringing in price spread agreements - 'these ones are going to be a threepenny spread', and 'sorry, love to make you a different price, but can't'; or indeed some saying, 'well we've got to make a threepenny spread, but you can have them a penny cheaper' - it was an irritation, and I think that is what started the conflict between broking and jobbing, definitely.

BA:  Do you feel it harmed the brokers' business, in the sense that it inhibited a competitive price?

JB:  It harmed the broker perhaps because it became more expensive for the client to deal, though if you're dealing for institutions, then quite honestly they should be dealing in long-term and a penny or halfpenny shouldn't make much difference.  It just seemed unnecessary to us brokers that a chap has to make a price, rather than if he wanted to make something different he could, or should be allowed to.

BA:  Did it make all that much difference in the end?  As you said, you could ask the jobber to deal inside, and then as many jobbers have said to me, while the spread was fixed, the actual price wasn't and you could then check with all the different jobbers and theoretically get a closer price.

JB:  Yes, you could.  It didn't really work like that very much.  I know in theory it should, but in practice I don't think it did work.

BA:  Can you elaborate on that?

JB:  Well you very often found them all making the same price.  I think what you did do ...  perhaps they made the size a little bit bigger for a while.  It's a fairly trivial thing, but it was just an irritation, and I think that, as I said, is where the conflict started coming in.  And then I think it presumably came in because the jobbers weren't making very much money; and times were difficult, which probably meant the brokers weren't making very much money; and then with our commission going down, we were looking at fixed spreads and thinking, 'well, the jobbers must be doing alright, or should be doing better; then we've got to go single capacity because we can't exist on our commission alone.  We're matching most of the business anyway'.  I think that was the way the thinking was going.

BA:  Were there firms who were known for busting spread agreements?

JB:  I think no, not as such.  I think any of them would bust an agreement if they felt that there was an order in it and they wanted to do it.

BA: How did you feel about joint books?

JB:  I didn't mind that so long as you knew, which you did normally know; you were meant to be told that they were joint with so and so.  I don't think we came up against them very often, and presumably they were either joint books because they were such duff stocks, nobody ever dealt in them or there happened to be a big deal had been done and a couple of them had got together to do it.  On the duff stocks, I just had sympathy for the jobbers on that, they weren't going to get anywhere, and if it was a joint deal or something, well fine.  If it suits both of them to do it jointly, that's good.

BA:  Now, one thing I've been told jobbers didn't like was a broker-dealer taking a large order and breaking it into smaller chunks.  Was that something that was also a problem or was it only an occasional occurrence?

JB:  No, by that you mean that you have 100,000 shares to sell and you sell 25,000 to Wedd and 25,000 to Akroyd -  you didn't do that more than once.  You actually probably didn't do it once, because in the bigger firms in doing the institutional business, your dealers would have told you very quickly, you go to one chap and you deal a penny out or ...

Tape 2 side 1

JB:  The thing there was that the client was playing fast and loose with you in that he might give us an order, in 50,000 shares and he might give Messel an order and Cazenove an order and so we in our own right would be totally innocent, but the jobber would actually suddenly see three or four [orders], almost certainly the same seller, coming in through different brokers, which is from his point of view a disaster. But we might have no control over it, in fact I always used to think that the salesman was being wet if he couldn't talk to his client and say, 'look, you do realise that you don't sell it round the corner; you give us the order or as much as you want done, and then if you're going to give some more to someone else, you let us finish ours first and then go off elsewhere, not do it at the same time'.

BA:  What was the main attraction to the client, was it simply they could get a better price?

JB:  They might get a better price, they would certainly get rid of their stock, If they gave four people 25,000 shares to sell each they would within twenty minutes, or however long it takes to go in and deal and report back, have got rid of 100,000 shares.  The price mightn't be very good, but they would have got rid of them.  Whereas if they came to us or any other broker and said,  'look we want to sell 100,000' and you go to the market and they say, 'well we'll take 25,000 to start, but we're not interested in taking any more, because, for whatever reason, we've got too many, or whatever', he's sold his 25 and he's still got 75 and he's looking at them.  

BA:  Was it fairly difficult for a jobber to identify the institution that was involved in doing that?

JB:  It was difficult in the old days;  well, it didn't happen too much in the old days.  One certainly got to know - both brokers and jobbers - the likely ones who were going to do it; mainly spiv merchant banks and  fringe performance funds, who would do it.  But obviously now under the new system those boys are finding it very much harder because the market-making side know straight away that it's 'Charlie-boy' who behaves like that, and so he doesn't get much sympathy. But no, originally I don't think the jobbers did probably know who they were, but it wasn't such a factor then.

BA:  Were you conscious, as the 60s progressed, of the contraction in the number of jobbers?

JB:  Certainly.  I can't remember how many jobbers there were when I started but I think it was quite a large number, I think it was 60 or 70, and very quickly it got down to 20.  But the ones who'd gone out were normally one or two man firms, and it was really just those two guys punting around on their own account and making a little bit of money or not.  It wasn't what you might call serious business, I don't think.  It was a club and it was meet your friends, and if you can make a few bob on the way, that's fine.  So some of them weren't particularly doing a really useful job, or necessary job.  As it came down to 20 or 15, yes one was aware of people going out, but the contra to that was that the ones remaining, the Wedds, the Akroyds and people, were getting bigger and bigger, either on their own account or by merging with people who wanted to go out or whatever;  and by them getting bigger you weren't finding you were denied dealing in the amount of stock, particularly, that you were wanting to deal in.  The market was getting bigger, although there were fewer players in it, so to my way of thinking it wasn't a particularly detrimental step.

BA:  So you didn't feel that particularly as you go through the seventies and you had the two very big jobbing firms emerge, that this placed pressure on brokers because there were a very limited number of firms ultimately that they could go and deal with and in certain cases they might have you over a barrel?  Or is that a mischaracterisation, or incorrect characterisation?

JB:  I don't think that really happened.  Yes, it was a factor, but Wedd and Akroyd were the biggest but that was mainly because of their gilt business, or in my view it was mainly due to their gilt business, where they had a monopoly, the two of them.  I think that it was relatively easy to make money in gilts in the seventies, which subsidised some of the equity side. And because they were making money when perhaps pure equity people like Smith Brothers and Bisgood were alright but not making very much ... Wedd and Akroyd were doing pretty well because of the gilts.  But you always had Smith Brothers who were always prepared to take you on.  You had Bisgood who were expanding through the seventies.  It was sour grapes if one was thinking the big two have got us over a barrel - I don't actually think that's right.

BA:  Would you, you personally, ever liked to have had more jobbing firms to go and deal with, or at least to go and check with?

JB:  In theory it would have been nice, in practice I think it would have made things much harder because you would have ... I don't think it could have happened,  because I don't think there was enough business around to be profitable for more jobbers to be there.  That's why they were all disappearing or merging.  But I think it would have caused terrific problems in terms of rumps and rights issues and things if you'd actually got six or eight fairly big jobbers, who you had to get all in and ask how many do you want and this sort of thing.  It would have made the broker's job terribly difficult because we'd have ended up with no put-through business probably, which might have been good for the market, but instead of the jobbers going out, all the brokers would have gone out!  It was a contracting number of jobbers and brokers because there wasn't sufficient business around for everybody to make a living.  So I think it was going the right way, and I think when it ended up before Big Bang and you had 4, stroke, 5 big players, that wasn't too bad. Akroyd, Pinchin, Smith, Wedd, Bisgood were all quite competitive in various markets.

BA:  Capital and profitability were one of the strains on the jobbing system in the later period.  The other one which is often referred to is the development of an international market, both in international securities but also in UK domestic securities in the form of ADRs and so on.  What was either your attitude, or the firm's attitude to these developments?  Did you begin to feel that single capacity and the obligation to deal through the Stock Exchange itself was placing a strain on one's business and that there were pressures to deal outside - either with an American House ....

JB:  Yes, I think that is correct.  I think the feeling was that we in London were the odd man out in doing business in dual capacity, and that with the advent of the Merrill Lynches and Shearsons and people coming over here and setting up offices, they were outside the Stock Exchange's rule; in fact weren't allowed to join.  How much business they were doing I'm not absolutely convinced in my own mind, but there was no doubt that if they did get an order they could cross it with our clients, make two commissions and a turn or however they wanted to show it, which was jolly attractive to the broking side and probably the jobbing side, and we were prohibited from doing it by being members of the Stock Exchange.  And I think that that was certainly one of the driving forces why my firm, which was one of the chief pushers of single capacity [ie. dual capacity].  Because with not a great deal of business around, not making very much money, it seemed the obvious if not the only way that we could actually increase our profitability, our income.  But that was looking at people coming into England.  As regards England becoming international, we didn't have very much of that business.  We went through, as lots of other people have done, having offices in Tokyo and Hong Kong, New York.  Tokyo was always a wash-out because the Japanese appear to only want to deal with themselves, so it's a very high-cost, expensive operation, without seeming to us to get any reward.  We weren't any good in America particularly, and we felt there that as London became more international-minded, if the Pru wanted to buy an American stock the chances were that they'd go to an American broker who should know as much, if not a lot more than an English broker, who'd be passing it on second hand.  So we didn't think that there was a lot of that business around.  Hong Kong was alright, but that was a slightly different sort of business.  But in terms of getting international business into London we couldn't actually see it being a great feature.  But by getting the international firms in who could by-pass the Stock Exchange that was what made us think that we ought to be allowed to do the same thing.

BA:  Did you feel it was possible to get a better price for a stock from an outside house like an American stock broker, Merrill Lynch or whoever, than the jobbers?  Was there, during the later stages of single capacity, a definite premium on going outside.

JB:  I don't think so. I don't know the answer to that because we never did that.  Dealing in a UK stock you mean?   No, we've never done it.  But I would be very surprised if you could get a better price.  A client going direct might because he'd be able to negotiate his commission and turn and roll them into one and possibly get slightly less.  But a broker wouldn't be allowed to deal with them anyway.

BA:  Was that happening, the clients beginning to go direct to the outside houses?

JB:  There was a lot of talk that it was happening, whether it was I don't know.  But it was a fear that it was happening, and it might well have been.  Certainly in ADRs and things like that people were dealing direct with Americans.

BA:  Did you ever suspect that jobbers themselves might be developing or have contacts with outside clients, or outside broking houses, and again with reference to the later period, but also during the earlier stages of your career?

JB:  Yes, well we knew that they had.  In the early stages there was a limited amount of client/jobber relationship. There was one investment client who I think everyone would know, did most of his dealing himself with jobbers and then booked it through; came to the brokers and said, 'I've dealt. I've bought these or sold these.  Book it to Wedd or Akroyd or whoever'. I think that was only one dealer. There was obviously a certain amount of contact in the early days between the jobber and the companies in which they dealt, through AGMs and obviously trying to find out what was happening during the course of a year, which was reasonable.  I think that the real contact between jobbers and clients started probably in the mid to late seventies - possibly earlier than that, early seventies - when quite a lot of the merchant bank dealers were meeting the jobbers.  There were quite a lot of investment clients.  You'd have three or four investment clients and a jobber might be there because they'd like to talk to him about markets generally or whatever.  And then as we got nearer the end of the seventies and early eighties I think the jobbers were doing much more because they were getting their own research in their own firms, and that was of interest to the investment clients.  So they were getting to know them, and also I'm sure they were looking ahead. Something was going to have to give at some point and it was almost certainly going to be dual capacity going down to single.

BA:  What did you think about this? Did you think it was perfectly reasonable or somehow against the spirit of single capacity as it were?

JB:  I'm not sure that it was really.  Jobbing is all about information - well stock broking is really - and you've got to get as good information as you possibly can.  And you might get some quite good information from a client.  You can't really expect any source to be debarred.  It's up to the jobber to try, and he'll either be shown the door or he'll be invited in.  No, I think, it didn't matter when we were all single capacity, because the jobbers could have a marvellous relationship with a client, but the fact remained if he did deal he still had to book it through a broker and the broker still got his commission.

BA:  Yes I was going to ask you about that.  You mentioned that one institution was notorious for doing this.  What would be the nature of the commission?  Would it be the ordinary commission that one would receive.  

JB: Yes.

BA: So in fact the particular brokers concerned in a sense weren't losing money?

JB:  No no, it was just that this chap liked doing it himself.  He'd come down at about 11 o'clock in the morning to the Stock Exchange and would have a couple of gin and tonics with the jobbers and they'd talk about it and then he'd come round to one of our boxes and say, 'right, would you book the sale of a quarter of a million Distillers to Wedd, or whatever.'

BA: So there was no commercial advantage for the institution for example?

JB:  No, the client presumably felt that he'd dealt at the right price because he'd done it, so he wouldn't be worrying whether he was legged over or not.  It suited the jobber.  Because he actually dealt with Wedd mainly the whole time, very occasionally elsewhere, but mainly Wedd. So it was a captive client to Wedd. They were going get the business and they were going to get it clean because no broker had tried to place it or give an early warning that there was an order around. And it didn't matter to the broker really.  I think people twitched a little bit about it, but I was very relaxed about it.  You've got a nice order given to you and you could always probably arrange, or negotiate with the jobber to try and do the other half of it if you felt there was a chance.  It wasn't taking anything away from anyone.  There were still commissions and still a turn.

BA: Strictly speaking could a client tell you which jobber to book a bargain to?  Or was this a grey area?  How would the Stock Exchange feel about that?

JB:  I have a feeling it was against the rules, but I think that actually if a client rang up and said I want to sell or buy XYZ and I want you to deal with Akroyd, I think one would probably go and do it.  Because if he says that he wants to deal with Akroyd one of two things will have happened.  He's either already talked to Akroyd and said that Hoare will come in and want to buy some, or he'll say 'I want to deal with Akroyd because actually I was in a muddle the other day and they were very kind and they took some stock at the wrong price and I'd like to give them something back'.  In which case I think we as a broker would go in and say when you want to deal, 'this is from Charlie Bloggs of XYZ pension fund saying thank you for being so friendly the other day', which I think is perfectly reasonable.

BA:  Did you clients often know which jobbers you'd done the bargain with?

JB:   Very seldom.  One or two asked, but very very seldom and I don't know why they would want to know, but if they asked we'd be quite happy to tell them.

BA: The reason I asked was because with that example you've just mentioned, the client would tell you that say Akroyd had done a good turn the other day.  Would that be a case in which you'd mention?

JB:  Yes, that's normally when there's a query or an error.  An error's gone  through and it comes up two or three days later, and the jobber said 'OK well, hell I'll take it'.  Then we would tell the client that so and so's been very kind and actually done it, and we'd like to try and give him something back if possible.

BA: When I asked you about spread agreements you said this was one of the first things that caused relations between jobbers and brokers to become a little bit more fraught.  Were there any other factors in that development, or have we covered them already?

JB: I think that and the Rule 90 put-throughs which were becoming much more frequent, and because they were becoming much more frequent the jobbers were missing out perhaps on their business and so they were wanting to get more of the action.  But the put-through thing has been a running sore ever since ... I note now that they are still talking about possibly bringing it back even in the new world. But it was price agreements and possibly ... Those two mainly.  One was going to say perhaps the jobbers trying to become bigger, but that is what actually it was all about.  They weren't going to survive if they didn't.  We were trying to become bigger, and you couldn't blame them for trying to do more business. 

BA:  When you say more business: covering more markets or bigger bargains or more turnover?

JB:  No, trying to take more of the business from the brokers, by stopping  put-throughs or whatever.  Otherwise I don't thing there were.  It worked very well.

BA:  Did you feel that - thinking perhaps of the five main firms towards the end - that each had its own distinctive character, or were they all more or less offering a similar kind of service and all more or less dealing in the same way.  For example, someone has characterised Akroyd to me as the 'thinking jobbers'; someone's characterised Smiths to me as great traders, turning over stock very quickly; Bisgood felt they had a speciality in immediately digesting a piece of company news and offering a price very very quickly.

JB:  They were all pretty good at digesting a bit of news; they had to get a price out quickly.  I would have thought Bisgood were recognised for the USM market, where Winterflood undoubtedly through good publicity ... Whether in  fact he was any bigger than any of the  others I don't know but his publicity was very good.  He was the leader in the USM market.  Smith I would agree were traders.  I would rather look upon Akroyd as the gentleman, Wedd as the players; and Pinchin really were sort of an enigma.  They were very good in some things, but to me they didn't seem to modernise, either themselves or internally.  It seemed very much a 'partners and the rest' sort of attitude; they hadn't really altered.  But basically they were all commercial, very commercial.  They were all keen to do the business.  They were all keen to make money.  I don't think there were any real characteristics. Characters and all that thing rather went out at the end.  We'd almost become automatons anyway.  It was just prior to looking at screens, where there wasn't much room for characters  We were all getting rather hectic and hassled by the new world.

BA:  Were you aware of what was known as the jobbers committee?

JB:  Yes.

BA:  What was the attitude of a broker to this particular body, because it didn't have any official standing in the Stock Exchange.

JB:  We hated it.  It was another move on from price agreements.  As you rightly say, it had no recognition from the Stock Exchange.  It was an unofficial body.  But it was sometimes presented to brokers as 'the jobbers' committee has decided to do this', which was fine; but they had absolutely no right to decide that and so one's almost automatic reaction was 'Ok, fine, we've decided we're not going to do it', because it was wrong in principle and wrong in every possible way.  If they had come out into the open and admitted that this was the jobbers' committee and these people were on it, and if we actually had a couple of brokers on it as well, then it might get a bit of standing.  But I suppose it was actually trying to do what the Council wasn't doing really.  But that was a great irritation when occasionally a dealer came in or one of your mates in another firm and said, 'have you heard, the jobbers committee have decided to do this'.  Well you'd say, 'well I haven't heard it' or 'I have heard it. Absolutely monstrous, and we shan't pay any attention to that'.

BA: Did it make the system any less competitive, though?

JB:  I can't answer that.  I'm trying to think of the sort of things they actually suggested.  One's feeling is that it was there to try and make things easier for the jobbers, that was the only possible reason for it to exist. There were probably reasons for it there like these competitive fund managers who run round the back.  It would actually be perfectly reasonable for the jobbers to form a group and come round to the brokers who are either involved in it or who know the clients and say, 'look, isn't there something we could jointly do about it'.  That actually would seem reasonable.  But to set up under their own steam just didn't seem to be the right idea. I think they were aware of the fact that it was a pretty unpopular idea

BA:  Let me ask you a few concluding questions.  Would you say there were strengths in single capacity and what would you say they were?

JB:  I think there were.  I think that you were able to deal much easier than you can now.  In my view there's no doubt that if you have to report a deal that you've done, as you do under the current system, ninety minutes after you've dealt or whatever, that people aren't necessarily going to take you on in a large amount if it's going to be announced to the world that a deal has been done.  It's not very difficult to

Tape 2, side 2

JB (continued): hit the market and spoil the  deal.  I think in the old days you were able to do your business.  It would be kept secret.  There was a chance that the jobbers could make money on that basis.  In a way I think it was a freer market.  You could deal in more stocks.  You didn't need to deal in the vast amounts that we do now. The clients perhaps weren't so sophisticated.  You didn't have to do programme trading.  You were asked to deal in one stock and that's what you did.  Capital obviously is of importance and I don't know how jobbers got on, but they've always assured me in the past that lack of capital has never stopped them from being able to do a deal, which I believe.  I think it was a good system, but under the way the world works, it was something that couldn't actually last.  There wasn't sufficient income in it for brokers and jobbers to live separately.  There doesn't seem to be much income in it for them living together, but maybe it'll come right one day.

BA:  Did you feel there were any weaknesses in the single capacity system, or the jobbing system more particularly?

JB:  I don't think particularly.   Even with four to five reasonably sized jobbers, there was always somewhere to go to deal.  Markets didn't move as much.  People were prepared to stick their neck out and do a deal, even if it didn't suit, because you didn't get these wild fluctuation of market movements.  That's the strength. I don't think there were any real weaknesses in it.  Because it served the purpose which was that you wanted to do your business and you were able to do so.

BA:  Did you feel a jobber was a very different kind of person to a broker?

JB:  Oh yes. 

BA:  Could you elaborate?

JB:  Yes, in my view a jobber is just a spiv.  He's a complete trader, doesn't really worry about the fundamentals of anything - gets up in the morning, comes in, obviously inherits or has yesterday's position perhaps or maybe was lucky and went home level, comes in turns over a bit of stock, hopes to make a turn on it, and as soon as five o'clock comes, goes home and forgets about it.  It's day by day stuff. There's no long-term goal or plan.  It's just there for the moment.

BA:  Would you have ever, if someone had suggested to you, considered becoming a jobber during the course of your career?

JB:  If someone had suggested that I should go into a jobbing firm in September 1957 and hadn't suggested that I went to Hoare and Co., then I probably would have gone into a jobbing firm.  But I don't think I'd have been any good at it, because I don't have a bookmaker's-type mind, and a quick, mathematical odds-type mind, which is what you need.

BA:  I think we'll finish on that note.  Thank you very much.