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

Interview No. 30:  Geoffrey Moy

Interviewer: Bernard Attard

Institute of Historical Research: 18 June 1990

Tape 1, side 1

BA: Could you first tell me, Mr Geoffrey Moy, where and when you were born?

GM: I was born in 1922 in London, in Streatham.

BA: What date was that in 1922?

GM: March 20th.

BA: What were the names of your parents?

GM: Robert Joseph Moy was my father, and my mother was Ella Muriel Moy. She died about 1942.

BA: What was your father's occupation?

GM: He was a stockjobber.  

BA: Were any of your other relatives in the Stock Exchange?

GM: Yes, I had an uncle who also ran a Stock Exchange firm which was called Moy Davies Smith & Vandervell - country brokers.

BA: So was it a member firm of the London Stock Exchange?

GM: Yes, they were both member firms.  My father became a member in 1909 and he started his own firm in 1919 called Robert Moy & Co.  And he specialised in the rubber market because round about that time a lot of these Malaysian rubber companies came to the market.  There was a rubber boom in 1911 and after that they became extremely popular with the British public.  He started in the market I suppose, after the end of the First World War.  He instigated bringing these Malaysian rubber companies to the British market.  He and a friend with Zorn & Leigh-Hunt, which were the main rubber dealers at that time, were more or less responsible for this move.  That was in 1919.  I joined the firm in 1947, after the war, and became a member in 1951.  

BA: Let me go back a little bit.  Have you a recollection of who he was working for before he formed Robert Moy & Co?  Was it a jobbing firm or a broking firm?

GM: I've got all these notes here because I've been taking them from our genealogy point of view.  He became a member in 1909, as I said.  In 1911 he joined a firm called P Vandervell which lasted up to the commencement of the First World War.

BA: Were they a jobbing firm?

GM: No, I think they were brokers, actually.  There were so many of the firms in those days; there were, as I expect you've probably seen these Stock Exchange books, there's about four or five hundred, all terribly small firms with about two members.  Anyway, he joined P Vandervell.  This was up to 1914 when he joined the army.  And then he was associated with my uncle's firm which was, as I said, Moy Davies.  His name was Arthur Moy.  Actually it was 1920 that he started his own firm and he had about two partners, which became larger as time went on.

BA: Do you have any recollection of what your grandparents had done?

GM: Well, my grandfather, although I've looked him up, in his history appears to have been on the Stock Exchange, but there's no mention of him in any of the members books, so I would imagine that he must have just been associated with a firm.  It might have been with my uncle's firm because he died in 1937, and back in 1888, when we were looking up some other details about the family history, he gave his profession as Stock Exchange, although he couldn't have been a member actually.

BA: And what about your other grandparent?

GM: Well, my grandmother?

BA: Yes.

GM: Well, I think she died ... we haven't really gone into her details, actually.  I don't really know very much about her.

BA: What about your grandparents on your other side?  Do you know what your grandfather had done on your mother's side?

GM: Yes, he was an artist, actually.  And he lived, I should think, from about 1830 to about 1900.  My mother was born about 1890 and died in about 1940 or so.  She was about 49, 50 when she died.

BA: Did you have any brothers or sisters?

GM: Yes, I've got two brothers.

BA: What have they done as careers? 

GM: My elder brother he has been with BP for quite a long time, ever since about 1940.  He left BP in about 1978 and joined an American oil company called Pace.  He retired last year.  And my other brother, Trevor Moy, went out to Ceylon in 1950 and became a tea planter.  Ultimately he became Chairman of the company which was called George Stuart and was responsible in about 1977 for bringing all the British tea companies under the jurisdiction of the Ceylonese government - they were all nationalised - and he did it all and he got an OBE for it.  Since then of course the company didn't really have any business so they had to branch out and find new ways of making money.  And so they went into a whole variety of things which weren't particularly successful but fortunately they had quite a lot of property so they were able to live off selling the property and things like that.  But he's retired now as well.  He retired last year and I think he's very glad to be away from Sri Lanka as you can imagine.  They've had a lot of trouble out there and they're still having it.

BA: Where had your parents sent you to school?

GM: I went to Stow.

BA: Had the Stock Exchange impinged terribly much on your upbringing?  Did you have much impression as a boy of what your father did for a living?

GM: No, none at all.  I realised what he did for a living.  We used to have the Financial Times at school.  I used to make a kind of chart of the shares and things like that because I was interested.  I always felt that I would rather like to go into the Stock Exchange anyway.  So that was a kind of start anyway to doing this.  

BA: Have you got any idea what attracted your father to deal in rubber shares?  Had there been some personal connection?

GM: There'd been a tremendous amount of publicity about rubber shares, and tremendous turnover compared to other markets and also he was very friendly with this senior partner of Zorn & Leigh-Hunt.  And as he, I presume, was one of the main rubber brokers (I'm only assuming this) he probably got my father interested in going into the market.  I should think that's more than likely really.  So they had a good combination of jobber and broker.

BA: Was this particular broker the shop to many of these rubber firms?

GM: Oh, yes they were the shop, and of course they brought a lot of these companies in from about 1920 to about 1930 to the market as the shop so to speak.

BA: Had the rubber market been able to provide your father with a decent living?

GM: Oh, yes he did very well indeed out of it.  Up to 1940, of course.  In 1940, the Japanese, or was it '41?

BA: '41.

GM: '41, they walked into Malaysia and of course all those rubber shares were worth absolutely nothing.  They were selling them in bulk in those days.  He lost a lot of money then and I don't think he really properly recovered from that because he was making a lot of money, say from about 1930 to 39 and we all went to public schools and we all lived very well, and then of course the bubble burst.

BA: What do you feel the attitude would have been among the boys at school or the masters, to a city career, during the time when you were at school, the Stock Exchange?  For example, somebody has said to me that the Stock Exchange was regarded as the place for the misfit in the family.

GM: Yes, that's true.  I don't think at school it was given very much thought actually.  And also when you come to think of it, after going into the Stock Exchange, one realised that a lot of the people there were in their late 70s and 80s and they just treated the place like a club.  But there again, of course, you had to be pretty bright in order to make money.  If you were a jobber you had to be fairly bright.  You couldn't just have somebody who couldn't do anything else taking over the responsibility of jobbing because it was quite an acquired art.  You had to know when you did a good bargain and know when you did a bad bargain.  It was a question of something up there which either waved a red flag or a green flag.  

BA: You mentioned that at school you had an idea that you would like to have a Stock Exchange career.  

GM: Yes.

BA: Was that a fairly fixed ambition or did you have any other ideas?

GM: No, actually I was thinking at the time that I might've liked to have been an architect actually, because I was very keen on drawing and painting - I probably inherited this from my grandfather on my mother's side.  But of course then the War came along and after being in the army for a time there was no time after I left when I was about 24 of forwarding my career as an architect.  So that's why I joined my father's firm.

BA: How had the firm fared during the war?  You mentioned that in 1940, 41 the bottom fell out of the market.  Had your father been able to keep the firm ticking over?

GM: Yes, because, you see, in those days, the costs of running a firm were microscopic.  Whereas today the cost of running a firm is absolutely scandalous: you've got to make two or three million a week in order to run level.   But in those days, you had a small firm. In fact, I've got one or two balance sheets of my father's dating about 1946, and the outgoings of the firm, these were split, telephone bills, electricity, things like that, it only cost about under a thousand a year.  It was nothing.  And you could keep a firm going like that indefinitely, that is providing you've got a bit of capital behind you.  But of course you couldn't do anything like that now.  He was obviously living off capital because he lived in a fairly expensive sort of way.  He like clubs and things like that, and he was always very generous.  

BA: How would you describe the firm at the time you joined it in 1947, for example?

GM: Well, it was a small firm.  There were about four or five partners.  It was, I think at that particular time, the end of the small firm.  The very small firm was beginning to change.  People in the 50s started looking at larger combinations - the first firm to do this was Wedd Durlacher.  And so I thought that the possibility of being able to carry on alone, especially after my father died ... Because he was at the time about 80, well he was 80 in 1957, so he wasn't going to last very much longer. And of course the money that he left would have been divided between my brothers.  So I was rather keen on joining up with a larger firm, which we did actually in about 1959 - a firm called C.D. Clark.

BA: Let me go back to when you first joined the firm.  Was it still dealing exclusively in rubber shares?

GM: No, no.  He was also very keen on certain industrial shares which he was associated with.  He either knew a director or he'd been asked to deal in them.  So there was a kind of mixed bag of industrial shares which he used to deal in - things like Coalite, one or two store shares, and Crystalate - there was a whole hotch potch of things which had no real bearing on any type of market or anything like that; they were just things which he'd been asked to deal in or he probably knew the director or the chairman.  These days, if he was dealing in those shares now, people would always say that he had insider knowledge or things like that about it.  It would be rather frowned upon, I should think.  So it wouldn't be thought well of anyway.

BA: What was the first jobs they had you doing in the firm?

GM: Delivering stock, going round the Stock Exchange finding out where all the offices were; then the ledgers - putting in bargains in these big ledgers, sitting at an old fashioned desk on a stool, that sort of uncomfortable feeling in an old fashioned office, which as soon as we left was pulled down, about 1960.  It was Great Winchester Street.  So that was my first impressions of the Stock Exchange.  Then I went into the market in, I suppose it must have been about '49, although my father was always trying to get me to take another job!  I don't know whether he thought my capabilities of being a jobber were not all that good, but he was always sending me off on interviews to see whether I would be interested in joining Splintex Glass or Triplex, or something like that.

BA: What was your feeling about this?  Were you happy to stay with the firm?

GM: I wasn't the slightest bit interested.  I saw the Chairman of Splintex.  He said, 'I don't know why you've come.  You seem to have a very good job.  Why don't you continue on the Stock Exchange?'  So I said, 'Well, my father keeps on sending me off on these wild goose-chases.'  So in the end, as you can see, I have continued. 

BA: You went into the market in 1949.  Was that as a blue button?

GM: Yes, as a blue button.  

BA: And what kind of things did one do as a blue button?

GM: Well, you ran messages most of the time.  You watched what was going on.  You learned the prices.  Obviously your job as a blue button, besides delivering messages and learning the arts of dealing, one had to be able to remember all the prices, which of course is very difficult these days, because you are not watching people deal.  In the evenings you helped take out the profit and loss account and things like that.

BA: Do you have any recollections of going into the physical Stock Exchange itself, any first impressions?

GM: Well, actually the first time I went in was when I was in my teens, at the invitation of my father.  We just walked round the floor.  Nobody was actually allowed to go in but you could get special permission to take your offsprings in if you so desired.  I expect you probably know this story: if a stranger came into the House everybody would know, and they used to shout out 1400.  You know that story.  So you had to be extremely careful about getting permission and so forth.  And that was my first memory of it, although at the age of 14 or 15 one didn't really take in very much.  It was a massive old building, very impressive.  And they used to get up to lots and lots of games there, as you probably know, all fantastic games.  That was what kept them going, I think, really most of the time because certain periods were extremely boring.  There were days when there was no business.  I remember when I joined in the early 50s, sometimes we only did about five or six bargains a day, which is hardly enough to keep a firm going.  The general number of marks were probably about 5,000 in the Stock Exchange, whereas the average number these days is about 30,000.  

BA: How would you occupy yourself on a day in which there were only five bargains?

GM: Well, of course you did have a lot of people around you.  And I suppose really, it was more social than anything else.  One was always looking for business.  One was always going through one's books trying to find something which you could make money out of.  It wasn't just a question of sitting there waiting for the next person to come round.  I would say the same sort of principle works now, that you've got to look for business, you can't expect it to come to you the whole time.  You go round to brokers and try and get them interested in a line of shares, or something like that.  It's quite hard work to do this and to give a reason why you feel that they should be interested in buying them.  So that takes up a certain amount of time.  Then you've always got people coming round asking prices, showing an interest in the market.  And after all, I think one of the main things in those days was to have a good relationship with brokers, to know them well so that you could create some sort of business.  These days, that doesn't seem to be quite so important because everything's done by phone.  

BA: So would there be particular broking firms, or particular brokers that your firm would have had a long association with?

GM: People who specialised in the rubber market.  And then of course, my father used to deal, as I said, in these industrial shares.  One obviously knew which brokers were interested in which shares and one of the first things one would have to know was who was the broker to the company, who's the shop.  And obviously they would be the first person to be interested if there was a line of shares on offer or being bid for.  

BA: When did you actually become a dealer, authorised?  

GM: Well, that must have been about 1950.  

BA: What was the Robert Moy pitch like?  For example you mentioned that you were dealing in a mixture of industrial as well as the rubber stocks.  Did you have a separate industrial pitch somewhere?

GM: No, it was all in one, actually.  The way the floor was managed in those days was that you did actually have about 6 jobbers which made up the rubber market and they were all round us.  And also, to the right, there was the beginning of the industrial market, so it was quite convenient that my father's shares were on the outskirts of the industrial market, and the rubber shares were on the outskirts of the rubber market so to speak.  So it didn't really make any difference.  It was a good position.  It was a bench, an old fashioned bench, which one put one's board up against with one's prices displayed on it.  Eventually, I think, there were only about three firms in the rubber market, because in the '50s there was absolutely no business at all, so people just slowly disappeared. 

BA: Can you remember which the main firms had been?

GM: Yes, there was: Frisby Brothers, they were probably the biggest; and Pinchin, which as you know were taken over by Morgan Grenfell; Dickinson & Duncum was a firm which was takenover by Smith Brothers - I joined Frisby, actually after C.D. Clark packed up, but that I'll come to later; and there was a very tiny firm of two people called Bryer & Co; and another one reasonable size called Denny, which joined up with Pinchin at a later date.

BA: Did you have firms that have been described to me as book and pencil jobbers, or the spoon-fed jobbers, in the sense that they were very small and they would basically come and undo their business with the large jobbers.  

GM: That's right.  They did do that.  If there was a boom in the rubber market for example, certain jobbers would take up the first line shares and make a book in them and then at the end of the day they would come and undo their position with the actual permanent members of the market because obviously they didn't want to run a position overnight.  

BA: Was that something that happened in your experience?

GM: Oh, yes, it did.  It happened in the 50s, there were one or two firms that did do this.  After all, there was so much business going on in those days and there were orderly queues of brokers waiting to deal with you.  If there were boom conditions, not like it is now, where people rush round you, there, in those days, in 1952, they used to queue up to deal with you.  And after waiting about 20 minutes in a queue, they finally got to you and they said, 'What are Sunnyqhetto', or something like that, and you'd say, 'I'm sorry I don't deal'.  In fact, they went through the roof because they had to start a queue somewhere else.  But it was a long, rather lengthy process as you can imagine.  The thing about it too was that if you were standing in a queue and there were four other jobbers dealing in the stock, you would find that all four jobbers were making a completely different price to what you were.  There was no means of knowing what your opposition was making.  I'd would say, they might have been making 2 and 3, 6, and you might have been making 2 and 9, 3 shillings.  And you were dealing on that basis and they were dealing on the 2 and 3, 6 basis.  That's how life was in those days, and obviously the next day there was a lot of hard talking about the prices which clients were getting for their shares, or paying for their shares.

BA: Do you ever have recollections of particular experiences?

GM: Yes, it often happened, this.  It's not surprising really.  

BA:  And would the broker then come up to you and complain that you had....?

GM: He would come up and say, 'Well, look here, I've been having a look at the marks and they range between say 2 and 3 and 3 shillings, and I paid 3 shillings and the lowest mark is 2 and 3, what have you got to say about it?'  Well, there wasn't very much that you could say about it.  You weren't obviously doing him, but as I've just explained that's how it materialized.

BA: Did you ever have any way of knowing what the other jobbers were quoting?

GM: No, you didn't.  There was no way of telling at all, unless you looked at their boards.  The boards were supposed to be kept up to date.  They were ordinary things like about half the size of this table, with the stock on the left hand column and the starting price which was maybe a pound, and then as the shares went up you used to change the price.  But there again in those days, the art of jobbing was trying to prevent anybody else knowing what you were doing.  Today....

Tape 1, side 2

GM: [Today] everything's got to be shown within about three minutes.  Those days the art of a good jobber was to completely hide what he'd done and give the other jobbers the impression that instead of actually having bought the shares, he'd actually sold them.  This was supposed to be very clever.  Well, it is actually, because under these circumstances the price wouldn't change radically and you wouldn't be in a position where you might lose a lot of money having sold 100,000 shares.

BA: Well, how would you conceal what you were doing if you were putting your prices on the board?

GM: You might change the price, but it needn't necessarily be correct.  Say, for example, you sold some shares at a £1, a lot of shares; well, in order to be clever you would mark the shares down to 19s 9d or something like that, you see, so that the other jobbers would think you probably bought the shares.  So this was all part of the skilful back and forth play in the art of jobbing.
   
BA: Wouldn't you be misleading the brokers then as much as the jobbers?

GM: Well, you could possibly be, but there again, if you were foolish enough not to know what was going on, you were trying to be a little bit too clever, maybe the broker knew that the shares were going to be tipped and that was why he was buying them, so what would happen,  you maybe put the price down and then you'd probably go and sell some more, which you obviously didn't want to do.  Instead of being able to take a good profit on what you'd just done, you'd found that you had managed to completely mess up the whole thing.  In which case, if you had done that, you would have realised your mistake and that there was something going on, so immediately then you'd think, 'Well I've been very foolish, I must push the price up in order to get these shares back which I haven't got.'  So you then might call them, 20 and a penny ha'penny, [to] four pence ha'penny, something like that, because you'd been stupid.  So although you say you might be misleading the public, [if] they knew what was going on they would be able to take advantage of you.  

BA: Yes, that's what I meant, brokers coming up and doing the opposite to what you wanted to do.

GM: Yes.  So if you do do that you know well then I haven't been all that clever, I'm not fooling anybody.  I've got to fall in with what the rest of the market's doing.  I've made a mistake and I'll have to cut it.

BA: Were there ever times when that happened to you?

GM: Oh, yes, several times.  After all, I would say 30% of the bargains which you do are not good ones.  You've just got to hope that the majority of the bargains that you do you make money on.  But obviously you can't make money on everything.

BA: Who do you feel you learned your jobbing skills from?

GM: I think it's a thing which you pick up actually.  I wouldn't necessarily say that I learnt them from members of the firm.  I might have learnt them from the opposition, seeing how they worked.  Because, after all, the majority of the people that you dealt with or who were in the market, you were extremely friendly with.  You didn't obviously tell them what you were doing, but you had a very good association.  One used to see them in the evenings and things like that and maybe discuss, if you thought it [relevant], what you'd done during the day.

BA: Were there any jobbers from that period who stand out in your recollection as people who may have influenced you or stand out as characters?

GM: Yes, actually in those days there were far more characters than there are now, because obviously the place lent itself to characters.  As regards the people who were the other jobbers in the market, there were two or three who I shall always remember.  One with Frisby Brothers, which was our main opposition, was exceptionally hot.  You see, the idea, or the principle of the thing in those days, when you were jobbing, is that if a broker came round and dealt with you and his order was unsatisfied - that is if he had an order in 50,000 and you only sold him 10,000 - and there were no strings attached to it (that means that he was entitled to go round and buy the rest elsewhere) he would then start travelling round the market.  It meant that the person he had first dealt with was not entitled to go round the market and try and pick up the shares cheaper from another jobber.  And this often happened because Frisby were the main jobbers and you generally found that the broker went to Frisby first.  And you often found that this particular chap, as this chap [i.e. the broker] was travelling round the market, would immediately fly over to you and say, 'Have you got anything in so and so?', and you might sell him the shares and then two or three minutes later you'd find the broker come around to you, and you'd know perfectly well that you'd been picked up by this other chap.  But that of course was not recognized, that was a very dirty thing to do.  And so consequently one was always very careful of this particular individual.  And of course among the brokers, too, there were lots of very sharp people, who you didn't particular like dealing with, so whenever they came to see you you generally made them a wide price and told them where to go.  

BA: In general terms, what would make you feel unfriendly towards a broker?

GM: I suppose when a broker tries to be too sharp and tells you a lot of lies - you are the first person he's been to and you're not.  You find out that he's been round the market previously.  Obviously if you are told lies you have really no faith, you don't really want to know the broker, because you're never going to make any money out of him.  And lots of people have this reputation, or they used to have that reputation and of course they found it extremely difficult to deal.  It's not in their own interest to be untrue with the jobbers, after all they've got to live there - that was the old saying: 'You've got to live with these people.'   And if you aren't honest with them you won't be trusted.

BA: Did that type of broker begin to drop out or would you say there was always an element in the Stock Exchange?

GM: Up to the time of Big Bang I'd say.  Because after Big Bang everything was much more open.  Everything was reported on the screen, you didn't have the opportunity of trying to hoodwink the jobbers and the jobbers didn't have the opportunity of hoodwinking the brokers for that matter.  All in all, I suppose, Big Bang has been very helpful.

BA: In what ways would a jobber hoodwink a broker?

GM: Well, in the price which he would make.  Now a broker would come to you in all good faith and you'd make him a price, which was probably the right price.  And after all a jobber has got a pretty long memory and he probably remembers that if this broker is a seller, he remembers him buying the shares (after all this is part of the art of jobbing) and maybe three months has elapsed and the price of the shares has gone up quite a bit.  So he remembers that this chap has probably got a selling order, especially when he mentions the number of shares which he wants to deal in.  But this is after he has made the provisional price.  And the broker says, 'Well I want to deal in 85,000', and your memory goes back and says, 'Yes, he bought 85,000, he obviously's come round here to sell them.'  So you say, 'Well that's a large number of shares to deal in' and you load the price the other way, you see.  For example, if they're 55 60, and he says, 'I'd like a price in 85,000' you say, 'Well, you know, they're 52 62 in that number of shares'.  So maybe he'd say, 'Well I'd like to improve a bit on it' and then you'd realise what he is, so you come in and say, '53 or 52 61'.  So you know which way he is.  And ultimately, of course, he sold them to you at 52 which maybe is the wrong price.  You've made him 55 60 and maybe you have a buyer at 57 or something like that.  So you are going to get a big turn on it.  That's how the broker is taken for a ride slightly under those conditions when you know which way he is.  Because normally speaking, you make a price and you haven't the faintest idea whether he's a buyer or seller, as you learnt.  That's how it works.

BA: Was there any open bidding or open offering in the rubber market?  

GM: There used to be, it seemed to die out.  Before the war I believe there was a tremendous amount of that open bidding going on, but when I joined it was noticeable but obviously not with the younger people because they didn't really have enough courage to do it.  My father used to do it.  He used to go out to lunch and come back and start bidding up for shares which was complete hallucination or imagination on his part.  But nobody would deal with him because they thought he knew more than they did; so back in the early 50s he could get a share up from about 2 shillings to 3 shillings, just by bidding in the market for them, although he didn't know anything he thought he'd have a bit of fun and get the price up.  And then the next morning it was back to what it was before.  So all these tricks went on and it was all taken in very good part, I must say.

BA: How did the rubber market develop during the fifties?  You mentioned that it went through a very bad period, did it improve?

GM: Yes it did.  And then there was a boom in 1952 when the price of the raw material went up to about 50 p. And then it came back fairly suddenly.  It was due to the Korean War.  There was shortage of spot rubber.  They couldn't get the stuff over here or wherever they wanted to get it to.  But that soon got itself straigthened out and then up to about 1958 nothing went on at all.  And then in '58/'59 there was another rubber boom.  The price improved dramatically.  And of course the thing about this is that all these rubber shares were on very high yields - they were over 20% yields.  So this is why they were always very popular with the public.  They always used to say, 'put your little bit in rubber'.  It was a good saying because every portfolio had rubber shares in it.  And then, again, it fizzled out.  And then about 1960, the unit trusts started and one of the first things they decided on buying were rubber shares on their high yields because they made good mixes with some of the stocks which were only giving two or three per cent.  Unit trusts, M&G and Ebor, some of these very well known unit trusts, started buying rubber shares and that's when the market really started off, around 1963.  All the shares - and there were millions of them - started going through the hands of the unit trusts.

BA: Were the shops still very active?

GM: No the shops weren't active at all.  

BA: What had happened to them?

GM: Well, the shops were in a peculiar sort of position because all the shops rather controlled their own shares.  You see something like Harrison & Crosfields had about a dozen companies and they were all cross holdings in them, so that it was very difficult to get control.  They were never worried about what was going on because nobody could get control of them.  Some of the smaller ones might have been a bit worried, but the majority of them were in big groups - M P Evans, Barlow - a lot of well known names.  They all had round about a dozen companies and they all had cross-holdings, or otherwise they had an investment company which held the shares, so they were never particularly worried.

BA: Was there ever situations when a shop had too much control over a share and you had, for example, what I believe happened in the West African market, where they could effectively rig a market and get the prices up and down as they desired.

GM: I don't think they did that very much.  They were quite happy to let things go as they wanted or as the public wanted.  They were permitted to buy, I think it was 1 per cent each year, which they did. And after all I suppose quite a lot of the Harrison & Crosfield companies, because as you know they covered a very big span, they had 40 per cent holding in them so it didn't matter to them.  But these shares, of course, had tremendous rises.  They were standing at around 5p in the early '60s and went up to over £4.  There were a lot of them like that that were worth absolutely nothing. Because of land values in Malaysia - they went up from about £200 an acre to about £2000 an acre.  So it led to a very exhilarating sort of market as you can imagine.  It was a market which one could never be short of shares because you never knew what was round the corner.  So one was always rather a bull jobber in those stocks and it had a bad effect if you were dealing in anything else because one should never be a one-sided sort of jobber, one should always be prepared to sell stock that you haven't got.  As I explained in this particular case you daren't be short because something nasty could always happen to you [i.e. the market].

BA: Do you have any recollections of having been caught out?

GM: Oh yes, several times it's happened.

BA: Could you perhaps describe one?

GM: You mean in a kind of bid situation?

BA: Yes.

GM: Well, some of these bid situations were pretty frantic.  You might be dealing in a share round about 50p.  Well, actually probably a better case was Guthrie, which actually, were standing at £6 and the Malaysian Pelmadullan Unit Trust came in with a bid to boost their holding to 30%.  They had 25% - they wanted to boost it up to 30%.  And they came in and bid £9.  There was a 50% rise on the price one morning and it was a dawn raid.  Anyway they were able to pick up quite a few of them and we supplied them with stock which we hadn't got.  Our opposition sold 200,000 and we sold 200,000 at £9, which is what they were bidding.  So that they were then able to say that they had their 30% and were no longer in the market, or this is what we assumed.  But as the morning went on we discovered that they were not all that satisfied with the 30% because other people had been very sorry that they had missed the opportunity of selling  the shares at £9.  So they went onto this Pelmadullan unit trust and said, 'We'd liked to sell our shares too'.  As you can imagine we were short of 200,000 and although they were coming in round about £8.50 or so, because we had dropped the price when they were satisfied, it suddenly turned out at 11 o'clock that they were quite prepared to go up to 50% and take control of the company.  So it's this sort of thing, as you can imagine, which gives you practically a heart attack on the spot.  Because normally speaking, if you satisfy a 30 per cent buyer, you expect the shares to drop back, but they didn't do so.  They did for half an hour or so and then they came up with a complete bid for the company.  This sort of thing adds to the excitement as you can imagine.

BA: Were you able to close your position?

GM: Oh, yes, I was able to close the position at a profit and we had an extremely good day, needless to say, because the number of shares which changed hands was enormous.

BA: Was there much tipping going on in those days in rubber shares?

GM: Oh, yes, they were always being tipped actually.  The old adage was 'Always sell on a tip'.  But sometimes they never came back.  On these tips, the majority of people knew that they were going to go in the paper and it was the poor suckers who bought them on the paper tip - the public.  I wouldn't say that that is quite true because, as I say, sometimes they never came back.  A lot of people seemed to know that they were going to be tipped. I must say I would never buy a share on tip.

BA: Well, let's take up the story of your career with Robert Moy again.  You mentioned that in 1959 you joined C.D. Clark. 

GM: That's right, yes. 

BA: What were the circumstances there?

GM: Well, the thing was my father was at the time about 80 and he wasn't particularly well and I knew the people with C.D. Clark extremely well.  They wanted us to join forces, you see.  

BA: What kind of firm were they?  Were they also dealing in rubber?

GM: They were in industrial [shares].  They were in mostly food shares and they wanted to branch out.  They'd had a good year in '59 - the whole Stock Exchange had had a good year in '59.  So we joined up with them.  But there again, in the early '60s, the Stock Exchange kind of fizzled out again.  You see, that was the trouble.  In those days the firms were fairly small and if there wasn't much business going on in a certain market you were in a very vulnerable position.  There wasn't very much going on in any market.  Also one of the partners was being extremely difficult, so the senior partner decided he'd like to call it a day.  The firm packed up in 1967 and then I joined Frisby, which was our main opposition.  They wanted me to join them.  But there again, that didn't last for long.  That only lasted for a year.  And then in 1968 I joined Smith Brothers.  Then of course they said that I had the kiss of death about me after having three firms in two years.  But this was naturally a joke - or at least I hope it was!  

BA: What kind of firm were Frisby Brothers  in '67?

GM: Well, they were purely rubber.  They were still the leading jobbers in [it].  The senior partner, Cyril Frisby, had died, and they didn't really have sufficient funds to carry on and they didn't have a great deal of faith in the rubber market.  But there again it was from 1968 to about 1982 - 14 years - where the whole complexion of the rubber market completely changed.  In that time a tremendous amount of money was to be made, all because of the unit trusts, institutions.  Everybody bought rubber shares, and everybody did so fantastically well out of them.  There were bids for them and the price of land went up, as I say, from £200 to £2000 an acre and some of the land which was used for building, went up to £7,000 an acre.  So you can see that from a few pence they went up to pounds, and that naturally created a tremendous amount of interest - it was the market of the Stock Exchange for 14 years.  If you were always a bull you couldn't help but make money.  And of course we were the blue-eyed boys then.

BA: Were there other firms who persisted with the rubber market?

GM: No, there were only two - there was only Pinchin and ourselves.

BA: How did you come to join Smith Brothers?  Was it through personal contact?

GM: Well, as I said earlier, they took over a firm called Dickinson & Duncum, so they were in the rubber market.  When they heard that Frisby was closing down - that was the third jobber you see - they obviously wanted somebody who knew more about the market than the chap they had who was running it, who wasn't an expert.   Obviously, having been in the market since 1947, I knew a lot about the market and how it worked and so they were quite glad to have somebody who knew a bit more than their dealer who was really an industrial dealer.  

BA: How would you describe Smith Brothers in 1968?  Were they a big firm?

GM: No they weren't.  They only had about 25 dealers and I should think there were not more than a firm of about 75 people and now it's about 1300 or 1400 people.  You saw the results?  So it was a very small firm and it specialised mostly in industrial shares and also, of course, South Africans.  They were a big force in the South African market.  

BA: How did you find joining them?  Did you find it relatively easy to fit in?

GM: Well, yes, because you see as I was a specialist in the rubber market there was no difference.  I just ran the rubber book as I had done previously.  But of course I had more money to be able to spend on the book.  Always previously one was somewhat limited as to the funds which one could use.  When I was with my father, we ran the rubber book on about £10,000 a year; when I was with C.D. Clark, it was probably about £15,000; when I joined Smith Brothers it was about £60,000, but there again, you see, as time went by of course these shares were worth more in value.  In my father's day they were only worth a few pence, so it's all rather relative.

BA: Had you always been conscious of capital?

GM: Oh, yes, one has to be because at times, of course, the interest rates were very high.  One always had to know the size of the book.  It was something which one was always being asked in a small firm or with a big firm.  They wanted to know what their commitment is.  They wanted to know what you were a bull of and what you were a bear of.  And that of course is most important too when you are finding out how much it is costing you to run a book.  After all how much you are paying the staff, how much you are paying in split accounts and interest charges, you work it out and that is deducted from your gross profit, naturally, at the end of the year.  We did make very good profits and our overheads were remarkably small. 

BA: Previous to joining Smiths had you been concerned that you didn't have adequate capital or just the limits of your resources?

GM: Well, one was always worried about that because with my father's firm there was a limit.  He was one of these people who didn't want to borrow money from the bank, whereas these days of course it's a completely different story.  The more you borrow the more popular you become.  He didn't like borrowing money from the bank, [he had] rather Victorian ideas, and a lot of people wouldn't do so, so one had to keep the book under strict control and if towards the end of the account....

Tape 2, side 1

GM: We were talking about the control of the book.  It was very necessary to know exactly what your commitments were.  As I say, in my father's case he didn't want to borrow too much money from the bank and if at the end of the account... which would normally happen because people used to come in sellers at the end of the account.  And you could take advantage of this because as I was saying earlier one could read how a broker's mind was working.  He'd bought the stock at the beginning of the account, it hadn't gone up, so he wanted to sell it; or even if it had gone up, he still wanted to sell it because he didn't want to pay for the shares over the fortnightly account.  So obviously at times one could do a good deal like that and it was in your own interests to take stock on board at the end.  In fact there was a lot of that.  They would do cash and new deals - sell them for cash and buy them for new time - which you could also charge them quite a bit for because it would mean that of course the jobber was paying for the stock.  

BA: Did Smiths have a distinctive approach to jobbing or did you find....?

GM: Yes, they were forceful jobbers.  They wanted to run the market themselves.  Maybe this sounds slightly over the top, but they were aggressive and they wanted to be a formidable force in the market - which they undoubtedly were.  They expected you to do the same, really. 

BA: How did you find that?  

GM: Well it was OK as far as I was concerned because if one knows a market well, one feels fairly confident.  I think it's a matter of confidence really in yourself, knowing what you are doing, not having a vague idea whether you've done a good bargain or a bad bargain.  Obviously you make mistakes.  You have to take them as they come.  So being aggressive, there are ways of being aggressive.  One can do it in a pleasant way, one can do it in an unpleasant way.

BA: Is it possible to elaborate a little bit on that?

GM: What being pleasant or unpleasant?

BA: Yes.

GM: One can do it in a charming sort of way without getting the broker upset.  For example, if you've made a broker a price, and he comes back and he finds he can't get a better price elsewhere, you can change your price and say, 'I'm sorry, I've seen something else, I've changed my price.'  You suspect what he's doing, especially as you know probably what the other jobber's making anyway.  Normally speaking, with an unaggressive jobber, he might not change his price, he'd probably say, 'Yes, alright, what do you want to do then?'  But you can be hard and you can be unpleasant about it and say,' No I've seen you go round the market, I'm not going to be on to you', and change the price.  But you can do it in such a way that he can't really take offence about it.  It's just a matter of the way you tackle the problem, I think really.  There are easy ways to do these things.  I've always found that I've had a lot of friends amongst brokers and it's just a question of knowing them and explaining why you've changed your price and so forth.  It's just like that really.

BA: You mentioned earlier, in the early '60s, the influence of the unit trusts and the investment institutions in giving a fillip to the rubber market, were there other ways in which you noticed the influence of the institutions?  Did you find you were dealing in larger size?

GM: Oh, much larger.  Before, it was fairly small; the size of the market increased tremendously in the '60s. You were quite prepared then to make prices in 25, 50, 100,000.  And also the East were buying the shares too.  There were big orders coming from Kuala Lumpur or Singapore, and you used to offer them a stock over night, and they used to take it.  A tremendous number of shares in the specialized stocks which they were interested in went over there.  They built up very big holdings.  You see, they wanted all these English estates.  They didn't really want to nationalise them as they did in Sri Lanka, but they wanted to buy them fairly.  And they were quite prepared to pay high prices in order to hand them over to the Malays and people like that and the Chinese who ran the estates.  And I thought that they did it extremely fairly. They were happy to buy them at advance prices and then when they got 28, 29% they were then prepared to make a bid for them.  And if you look at the situation now, you can tell that they now do own practically every rubber estate because they've done it in a reasonable way.  

BA: How did that affect liquidity?  Didn't mean that more and more shares were being tightly held?

GM: Well, to start with you see, it meant that there was a tremendous market in them and then as more and more shares went over to the East and went into the institutions' hands the market began to close up again; so you had to be very careful whether you made a price in a large number of shares, or not; because in spite of the fact that some of these stocks like Highlands and Lowlands and Golden Hope and Kuala Lumpur Keepong, you felt that all the shares must be over there, then all of a sudden you discovered a seller of about 100,000 or something like.  And it still goes on today.  There are still shares over here which one's overlooked.  One doesn't go through the share register to check up who owns the shares but periodically you do get big orders over here.  Normally speaking, there's hardly anybody now who owns any rubber shares in this country, except for one or two institutions.  

BA: Did you find that you were still able to turn your book over fairly rapidly or were you taking positions that you were carrying?

GM: Well, one probably took positions because one wanted to.  After all jobbing in those days was a question of taking positions.  These days, it's still the same with our firm but it isn't with other firms who have been takenover by other bodies and they've been told to run level books.  You see it seems to me that the SIB and FIMBRA are slightly against the jobbers.  They want the market to behave more like New York, like Wall Street.  They don't want the jobbers to take positions, one gets this impression.  Whereas, obviously if you don't take a position, if you don't take a risk, you're not going to make any money.  They're destroying the jobbing system because of this.

BA: Had position taking always been an element in your firm's jobbing right back to the beginning?

GM: Yes.  One never wanted to be level.  One would say that you couldn't make a price if you were level.  

BA: Was that distinctive to the rubber market or...?

GM: No, to the whole Stock Exchange.  You had to have a position, otherwise you couldn't make a price.  You could make a very close price if you hadn't got a position because maybe you didn't mind which way you went.  But it's not really quite the case now.  A lot of people don't want to take any risks.  They don't really want to be market-makers.  They want to just get the commission on the brokerage deals which they are putting through.  

BA: How had your career unfolded with Smith Brothers?  Did you stay on the rubber book now right until you retired?

GM: Yes, I did.  Well, as I knew so much about it, they obviously thought it would be better for me to stay on it.  And after all, as I've said, there was a lot of money made on it, so that was obviously the main point. 

BA: Let me ask you a few more detailed questions about perhaps jobbing in the latter part of your career.  You mentioned earlier that by now there was only one other firm dealing in rubber stock, Pinchin.  Did you feel it was still a competitive market?  Did the brokers feel that they could get a competitive price?

GM: Yes, because we were both fairly aggressive dealers and so consequently they did get a good deal, although they didn't particularly like the people who dealt in Pinchin.  So we did have a bit of an edge on it.  The chap who ran the rubber book there was not a particularly pleasant individual and we always got first choice, practically.  But that doesn't necessarily mean that there wasn't any competition - there was a big competition.  Because he was aggressive as well.  So I would say that the public didn't do too badly out it.  But now, of course, Pinchin have gone.  Morgan Grenfell, who took them over, packed up dealing.  So there is only one jobber in rubber shares now.  But there again, it's unlikely that anybody else would want to come into the market because there's hardly any market.  All the shares as I've said have been sent out to the East or they're now owned by Malays.

BA: Did you ever feel there was a market outside of the Stock Exchange in the sense that institutions were dealing directly with each other, or they might have been going to an outside broking house or an outside merchant bank?

GM: Well, they weren't really allowed to do that.  They had to do their deals through the Stock Exchange.

BA: This is the clients rather than the brokers.

GM: The clients, yes.  The stock had to be put through, even if it was only for a minute amount.  So if you did the put through and you knew the price, you were always in a position to say that you didn't agree with that price.  If the price was below the market price, if, for example, the shares were standing at around about a pound and they wanted to put through stock at 95 and 95 and an eighth, you would say,  'No that's far too low, I'm quite prepared to bid 97 for the stock.'  So you might get it then.  This was how you could keep tabs on what was going on.  You could see the marks in the paper the next day.  You went through the marks with a fine tooth comb to know exactly what you had missed, and so forth.  So you could always keep a finger on what was going on.

BA: Were you doing much put-through business?

GM: Oh, there was quite a lot of put-through business, yes, because certain stocks were popular and there were lots of institutions who had extremely good profits and sometimes they wanted to transfer them from one fund to another.  They wanted to know the right price, and the only way to find the right price was to test the market.  

BA: Did you ever feel that you were being deprived of business in the sense that so much matching was going on that....?

GM: But you could always object to it.

BA: That was something you didn't ever have any qualms about?

GM: No, none whatsoever.  If you wanted the stock, if you thought that it was the wrong price which they were putting it through at, well then you would say so.  And they would say, 'Alright, if that's the wrong price, you  better stuff him with the shares.'

BA: Would you take stock on, if a broker had come up to do a put-through, even if you didn't have a buyer or a seller in mind?

GM: If you think that they looked cheap, yes.   As you say, you might not have any limits but you've got a pretty good feeling about the share.  You wouldn't take an unnecessary risk, although sometimes, of course, it didn't come off and you were stuck with them.  Well, it's rather like those shares with Ferranti with Smith Brothers.  We took the stock, look where it landed us.  

BA: One of the reasons I asked you about business going on between institutions, or outside the Stock Exchange, was because I believe that with a lot of international stocks, as the '70s progressed, gold stocks for example, that a lot of the business was being done outside of the Stock Exchange.  But this was not something that you you felt?

GM: Well, I think it might have been in foreign stocks, in South Africans, of course, but where the market was in London, and where most of the shares were held by the shops themselves, I'm talking about the rubber market - there were Harrison & Crosfield, Barlow, R P Evans, lots of shares which were controlled over here - they were more than happy to put them through the market.  If it was a London-based stock you had to do that.  You couldn't... Maybe it might have been done without one knowing it, but those were the rules.

BA: Did you ever have any contact with the companies in whose stocks you were trading, either with the directors, or at general meetings?

GM: Yes, we knew one or two of them.  I think it was rather necessary to know these people, especially if you could go on to them and say what you had in mind.  It could have been frowned upon, but you've got to know about the stocks which you deal in.  Not that you're asking for any inside information or anything like that.  All you can do is to go on and say, 'Look I've got a cheap line of x which you might be interested in and I've come on to you direct.'  And he'd say, 'Well, I'll have a think about it, and let you know through my broker.'  And he would deal through his broker, you see, let me know who it was, and that wasn't really frowned upon, although maybe the broker was rather upset that you hadn't gone to him straight away.  You did meet a lot of people who were associated with companies, and that's how it was done.

BA: Did the brokers ever use you as a source of information on the stocks?

GM: Well, they were asking questions about who the seller was or things like that? 

BA: Yes.

GM: Yes, but they're not really supposed to do that.  You'd say you couldn't tell them.  One had to be rather limited as regards what you said, because otherwise they would have probably gone on to them straight away themselves.

BA: What about generally people wanting to know about the figures of a particular company or whatever.  Did you ever find you were a source of information in that sense?

GM: Yes, they asked your opinion about what the figures were going to be and you really actually got this information from the broker who was the shop.  Because I don't think a jobber is all that good at working out a firm's profits.  I would say he's there to buy and sell.  He's not there to give a forecast.  But there again, when the figures do come out, within about thirty seconds you've got to make a price, so you've got to have a fairly good idea about whether the figures are good or bad.  And if you've got a reputation for always being wrong, it's best to just shut up and make a wide price.  

BA: Did capital continue to be something that you were very aware of, or with Smith Brothers did you always have, or feel that you had, enough capital?

GM: We always had enough, there wasn't any query about that.  I think, if your figures were good enough, your own personal figures were good enough, on the profits which you were making, I was never asked to cut the book, or do anything, because they were always quite happy with what was going on.  It sounds rather big-headed but it does depend very much on whether you are making money or whether you are not.  But one always had to keep a look out - not to overstep the mark.  Because, as I said, in the '70s you were dealing in far larger numbers of shares than you were in the '60s; and then as the '80s came up, of course, the numbers reduced again.  But there again, I think the rubber book is now over a million, whereas back in those days it was about 60,000, so it has increased.  They've taken up other stocks because, of course, there's not very much to deal in in rubber shares.

BA: Now when did you actually retire from jobbing?

GM: This was, let's see now, it must have been February '87.

BA: So you saw Big Bang and continued trading right through it.

GM: Yes.

BA: Taking your career right up to October 1986, did you find that jobbing itself had changed very much over the 40 year span of your career?

GM: No, it hadn't changed all that noticeably.  The same techniques, the same way of jobbing, the same way you taught people, remained more or less exactly the same.  It's only when the screens came in and it really ceased to become jobbing any more because the prices changed so radically. As you could see in October '88 [i.e. 1987] when we had 'Black Monday', everything snowballed because nobody wanted to buy any stock.  So each time one person changed the price, so did the other jobber until it was just snowballing down.  Nobody was dealing because they didn't want to buy any stock, whereas in the old days you couldn't have done that because you wouldn't have known what the other people were calling shares and you would have been stuffed anyway.  This is where this particular system - today's system - rather falls down: you haven't got anybody there prepared to take a risk, prepared to take stock.  Because everybody knows what everybody else is doing, in the reporting of bargains in three minutes or so.  Nobody's going to buy a million shares, are they, on a falling market, unless they have a good chance of being able to get rid of them.  The market has grown to such an enormous extent that on the screens these days you have prices up in large numbers which is the hundred thousand or a quarter of a million and it's a big risk, especially if you're going to be found out.  

BA: How had the Stock Exchange, as an institution, changed over the forty years in which you had known it?  You mentioned earlier that there had been a lot of older gentlemen around, it was more like a club, that there was a lot of fun.

GM: Yes, well that went, I suppose, with the new Stock Exchange.  In 1972 when the new Stock Exchange was built all that idea of bonhomie and so forth disappeared with the new Stock Exchange.  People obviously realised that business came first and there was much more business anyway.  Although, there were slumps as you know.  In 1974, that was a bad time.

BA: What are your memories of that particular slump because quite a number of people I've interviewed have referred to it as being a difficult time?  

GM: Well, of course the index went down to under 150 and it went on for quite a few months.

BA: Had it affected the rubber market, just as much as it affected any other market?

GM: I wouldn't say quite so much.  We didn't really lose much money.  Things came down but one had prepared.  One could see that there was going to be trouble, so one sold short and one was able to put the bears against the bulls and not really lose too much.  But of course the amount of business dried up and I think everybody felt the calamity of the whole thing.  Lots of people were sacked but there again of course the colossal expenses which are running at the moment weren't there then - you could run a firm on a fairly small figure.  It's impossible now.  

BA: Did you ever have any feelings at the time that market wouldn't...

GM: No, the Stock Exchange always had these cycles.  This present cycle has been going on for a time, lots of firms have fallen by the wayside.  Back in 1980 firms fell by the wayside, in '74 as well, back in '65.  There's always bad times.  People always think that the Stock Exchange must do well, but they don't.  It's a profession where there are lots of sad cases.  After all you've only got to know something about the Stock Exchange benevolent society to see all those people who were quite influential figures at one time who've had to ask for help from the Stock Exchange Benevolent Society, it's all very sad.  

BA: Do you feel jobbing had been a riskier profession to follow rather than some of the others, whether in the Stock Exchange like broking, or outside like law or accountancy or something like that.

GM: Riskier?

BA: Yes, thinking again over your own career.

GM: Yes, I think it's one of the riskier things to do because you are really rather living on your wits most of the time.  I don't think I'd pick it again, quite honestly.  You do get yourself very keyed up.  You've got to have the right sort of temperament for it and of course it can mean long hours.  And there again, of course it can mean short hours, depending naturally on the amount of business.  But it's a very exciting profession.  I must say I have enjoyed it very much, especially over the last twenty years or so.  It's really been most exciting, I wouldn't have missed that for anything.  But I wouldn't want my son to go into it - too uncertain.

BA:  Let me just go off on a slight tangent.  It's probably a question I should have asked you earlier.  One thing the people I interview occasionally refer to, particularly about the earlier periods of their career and the Stock Exchange, was trading on personal account and I'm just curious to know how common that was among jobbers, whether it is something that fell out of fashion?

GM: Well I never did it myself. I might have done it once or twice, but I think one's so influenced by working on the Stock Exchange, on the individual movements of the shares which you might be interested in, that you won't be able to concentrate on the matter in hand.  I'm talking from a jobber's point of view, not from a broker's, because a broker does it all the time.  But from a jobber's point of view, to my way of thinking it's just not on.  This is only personal, I know a lot of people that do do it.  I haven't myself.  

BA: Was your impression that only a few people would trade on personal account or was it....

GM: No, a lot of brokers do, because brokers obviously are seeing what their clients are doing. A jobber doesn't see.  He's got to rely on a broker friend to tell him, 'So and so is buying a lot of x, feel you ought to have some.'

BA: So there would have been fewer jobbers.

GM: Well to my way of thinking there would have been fewer jobbers because they wouldn't have the information.  After all they would....

Tape 2, side 2

GM: Brokers, as I was saying do it the whole time. 

BA: Would a jobber have to have a broker to do an order for him?

GM: Yes, you wouldn't be able to do it without a broker and you also do it at a member's commission which cost you about half. So that is also an added bonus if you wanted to deal.  But there again, I used to go in for new issues and things like that.  I don't think one really has sufficient confidence in one's broker friends because after doing this once or twice they are just as fallible as the next person.  I don't think I'm really a gambler.  I don't mind a calculated risk. I don't mind running a book. But I'm not a gambler. I don't back horses. I don't really buy shares.

BA: Let me ask you a couple of concluding questions.  Thinking about jobbing and the single capacity system, would you say there were any strengths in the jobbing system?  What were the advantages of a jobbing system that perhaps no longer exist?

GM: Well, I think you've always got a market in shares. The other systems in Wall Street and so forth, there's no kind of buffer to take the impact of a lot of selling or buying; whereas with the jobbing system you've got somebody there who's prepared to take stock or to sell stock and build up a position, so obviously it acts as a buffer.  So that must be a big advantage.  

BA: What were your feelings when the Stock Exchange decided to abolish single capacity?

GM: I think at the time, one felt that it was a bad thing because one couldn't really see how a new system could work.  After all, this system had been going for about a hundred years or more and it meant that of course every firm would have to change and it would be very expensive to change.  As you can see, I think our firm is an excellent example of not having been taken over but of  having to build up a completely different type of business, which needless to say has proved very successful, although at times one's been extremely scared about all the new bodies which one has been forced to take on board.  And, of course, as you can appreciate some of the salaries now are enormous and so one's expenses have gone up out of all proportion.  

BA: Would you say there had been any weaknesses in the old jobbing system? 

GM: I don't know.  It's difficult to put one's finger on anything.  I think the public could have been better treated.  It is a bit of a closed shop and I think when it was demanded that there should be changes it was probably justified, but not to the extent which it has gone to, because it is destroying the jobbing system and if it goes on like this it will be an extinct body.

BA: Now did you continue any involvement with the Stock Exchange or with Smith Brothers - or Smith New Court as it became - after you retired in 1987?

GM: I was on the compliance side after I gave up jobbing. And I retired in October '88, so I've been retired a year and a half.  I don't do anything now for them; I don't act in any capacity.  

BA: You mentioned earlier some of your feelings about your career as a jobber.  Would there have been any time during that forty years when you would have considered taking up another career?

GM: Definitely not, no.  Well, not since I've joined Smith Brothers, maybe before that, because things have been fairly successful with Smith Brothers.  Obviously when one's going through a bad patch, but this was a long time ago.  But I've never seriously considered giving it up, because once you've taken the bit between the teeth and decided to be a jobber, there's very little else that you're really suited for, so you might as well continue to the bitter end.

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