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

Interview No. 35: Arthur ('Tommy') Anderson

Interviewer: Bernard Attard

Institute of Historical Research: 24th July 1990

Tape 1 side 1

BA:  Could I first ask you, Mr. Anderson, where and when you were born?

AA:  I was born on 12th October 1923, in Dalston, which is Hackney; I suppose you might say, in London.

BA: What were the names of your parents?

AA:  Arthur William and my mother's name was Florence.  She was French.  My father was English. And we were five children.  I was the second eldest.  My father had a shop which was selling meat for animals.  From there on in that's all I can remember about my school days - I went to school.

BA: Would they have sent you to the local school?

AA:  Oh, we went to the local school. My father had no money. He sent me to the local school where I went until I was eleven and then went to what they call today a senior school, I presume, until I was 14. And then obviously I had to leave at 14 because my father's business wasn't very good; he would have preferred me to have got a job if I could. 

BA: Did he have any particular kind of job in mind?  Would he have liked you to have gone into his business?

AA:  No, no idea at all.  His business was never good anyway, it was finished; I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I thought I'd try this diamond merchants in Hatton Garden, where I managed to get a job, learning the trade and making rings and cutting diamonds, but I didn't stay very long, just six months.

BA:  How did you hear about them?

AA: They came through the school, where the people come round to the school to find out what you want to do, and I had no ideas, so they suggested that and I tried it.  But it didn't work.  I was there for six months and then I got myself a job through the papers actually, in a solicitor's office in Old Broad Street - or off Old Broad Street - which I had to go out every hour on the hour to see if there was any business that they could pick up.  I used to go to a place called Gresham House, and having to go there three or four times a day, I knew the lift man quite well and I was getting a bit fed up with just walking backwards and forwards and going back to the office and sitting there for one hour until the next time, so I said to him, 'Do you know anybody who wants a likely lad?'  He said, 'Well I've got just the place for you, I'll drop you off on the way up.'  So he dropped me off on the second floor, and said to me, 'Tell them I sent you in.'  So I went in to a firm called F & N Durlacher, which had three rooms as their offices.

BA:  Can you remember when that was?

AA:  That was a year after I left school, August '38.

BA: What did you do, did you arrive and tell them that you'd heard there was work?

AA:  No, I walked in there and I asked for the manager and said, 'The lift man has sent me in.  He said you were looking for a lad.'  So he said, 'yes'.  So we  had a little talk. He told me what he wanted me to do, make the coffee, post the mail, one thing and another.  So I thought it would make a change if nothing else.  So he said, 'when can you start?'  I said, 'I'll start whenever you want me to start.'  So he said, 'the following Monday'.  So I started the following Monday, and apart from making the coffee and making the tea and watching everybody go in and out of the office all day long, I found it was getting rather interesting.  And of course in those days, when the bargains were done, there were names to be written out and transfers to be made out, and I took an interest in all this, what was going on, and I volunteered to the people who were doing these sort of jobs. I said, 'Can I do anything for you?', which normally came round about account week, when there used to be hundreds of transfers to be made out and names which were passed from broker to jobber, [and] from jobber to broker.  Because we were the middle men.  And these had to be split up occasionally; well more than occasionally, more often than not, because you never bought and sold the same amount of shares all the time, so you split one lot of names.  And that's how I got into this and I found this very interesting and I was rather enjoying myself. And then of course, this went on till the War came.  And I think that was slightly - more than slightly - it was beneficial to me in this respect, because I was still a bit too young to go to the War and there were one or two people going and one person who was going was the transfer clerk.  So I got the offer, would I like to run the transfer clerk [department]; which I knew because I'd been watching, I could run basically, without being big-headed or anything like that. I think I could have run quite a bit of it, the jobbing ledgers and that, because I took an interest and I thought I'd found something I liked, and so I did that until 1941.  Then it was my turn to go to War.  But I found myself a niche there where I thought, if I come back the job is there for me.  I was told this, 'the job was there for me when you come back', and so that's how it stood.  So I went away for approximately, I suppose, about six years. I came back in February 1947.  And I'd only been back about three or four weeks and I went down with appendicitis.  The manager came home with me and said, 'Look after him, tell him he can stay away for a couple of weeks', gave my father a sum of money and my father couldn't believe this.  He said to me then, 'Son whatever you do, you've got a job for life there.'  And that's how it went on.  Then after a while I got the offer of a red button, which is a button which allows you to go checking bargains. It used to be underneath the Stock Exchange.  And I got that and I found that most interesting. I  was really enjoying life.  And then I got the offer of a blue button through the mistake of somebody else.  I'm a very lucky person.

BA:  How do you mean, 'the mistake'?

AA: Well, he was a blue button, which is on the floor of the House; he runs the messages.  And the art of running messages is [to be] as quick as possible and come back with the answer as quick as possible.  But - well he, instead of going to what they called a box where the people were, he went to the offices and was away too long, and they didn't know what had happened. So he unfortunately was sent back to the office, because it was a question of speed; because he wasn't the only one trying to get to the brokers.  And I got the offer. And of course I jumped at it. I couldn't believe it. From where I came from it was absolutely unbelievable.

BA:  About how old were you when you became a blue button?  Was it still in the 1940s?

AA: I suppose - I came back '47 - about 26; no, I think a bit more than that, about 28.  So I went down and they give you a little book.  And there were islands in the market where you had to go and call the waiter and ask them to call so and so, and so and so. This wasn't too easy actually because there were so many firms you had to recall, and so many stands; and we had to remember, or try to remember, where every broker was so you went off in the correct direction from the word 'go'.  Anyway, I devised a system round that.  Anyway, it worked alright.

BA:  Can you remember what the system was?

AA:  Yes, if I'm standing here and there's a pillar - we were all  standing around the pillar - the answer was, if you were lucky enough, you'd duck behind the pillar and get your little book out and have a look where it was and then go straight to it.  It didn't always work because sometimes they used to be on the stand in front of you.  Anyway that was OK, and I think they must have been pleased with me because I kept the job, obviously, and I took a lot of notice of what went on.  Because I was in what I call a world that I would never have dreamt to have got there.  After a while I used to know all the prices and used to remember a lot of what we call limits, which were there in the book.  And this went on, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Then one day, I think it was about 1950/1951, I was called into the partners' room and they said, 'How would you like to become a dealer?'  I said, 'I don't know.' I was absolutely dumbfounded. Where I come from, I couldn't have anticipated anything like this.  So I said, 'I'd love to. I'd love to have a try.'  So I was authorised, and I'll never forget the first morning, because, watching everybody else, nobody seemed to pick up the book to make a price.  It was made it off what was there the night before, what you think it was going to open the next morning.  And I'll never forget it, because the first price I was asked was the price in House of Fraser and my mind went absolutely blank.  No matter what it was, whatever the stock was, it would have been the same.  Anyway, it was House of Fraser and so my tutor - or my partner - who was standing behind me ...

BA:  Who was that?

AA:  Mr. Pat Durlacher, to my mind the best jobber that I could have ever learnt from; so he said, 'Well pick up the book.' So I picked up the book, and the price was, well, a crazy price today, seven fifteen sixteenths to over the figure - a very complicated effort that one.  He didn't say anything; he was quite happy.  Then I started doing a little bit of business here and there and then suddenly somebody came along and asked me - this is the first big deal I ever did, by the way - a price in Metal Box. I can't remember the exact price, but there was a sixpenny price and whatever you made it in.  So I made a price, and I remember making 3p outside in 50,000 shares.  Pat Durlacher standing behind me never said a word, never said anything. So the fellow said, 'I'll sell you 50,000'. So I said, 'Buy 50,000' - that's how it was done in those days.  I'm sure the price was 54/- at the time. Anyway, Mr. Pat Durlacher says to me, 'What are you going to do with that?'  I said, 'I'm going to offer them to Mullens.' So he said, 'And what are you going to offer them at?'  I said, '54/6d.'  He said, 'fair enough.'  Off I go. Came back. I said, 'I've sold them at 54/6.'  That gave me the confidence from then on to carry on.  If it had gone wrong, I wouldn't have known what would have happened. But it didn't go wrong.  And that's how I think I started on the way up.

BA:  Can I pause a bit now and review some of the things you said?  Have you any early memories of the Durlacher offices when you started?  Were they a small firm?

AA:  Oh very.  There used to be six partners and a staff of about 16.  We had two rooms.  There was a partners' room right up in the corner and then we had two rooms.  The partners' room in actual fact was about this size, not much bigger than this, and we had another two rooms where the staff used to sit.  The manager and the jobbers' ledgers, name clerks, and transfer clerks. I think that was about it.  There was no more than that.  

BA: How did they compare with other firms at the time, because we think of Durlacher now as being one of the biggest jobbing firms in the Stock Exchange?

AA:  I suppose we were on a par..., we were in the top three or four. Because nobody was very big in those days.  But what used to happen - I don't think I'm giving away trade secrets - what used to happen was the senior partner, more often than not, used to come in in the morning with orders in his pockets, which I don't think - it doesn't happen so much today, because most of it now goes through the brokers. But I think the answer to that being that my senior partner then, Mr. Esmond Durlacher, had very good contacts outside.  And I believe this is where a lot of it came from.  So that was beneficial to the firm, and to the staff, because the staff always seemed to get a bonus if there were any big orders and we hit it off alright.

BA:  These would be orders from clients?

AA:  From clients, yes.

BA:  What kind of clients were they at the time? Were they private clients or were they institutions? We now think about the pension funds and so on.

AA:  I wouldn't care to answer that because I really didn't know at the time.  I didn't know where they came from actually, because at those times you were just given the business and that sort of thing.

BA:  Would then the dealers have to go and put them through a broker?

AA:  Oh yes, you'd book them through a broker. It was always the same broker, so maybe the connections were through maybe the brokers.  I really don't know where the orders came from, whether institutions or private clients. I don't know.

BA: Which stocks were they trading in in those days, in the late thirties - can you remember? - markets I mean. Was it industrials or ...?

AA: No. The industrial market, no.  It used to be rubber shares and from then on they went, I don't know when, I can't remember now - and the brewery market, that was the other one; brewery market and rubber market.  And then the rubber market had more or less finished and then they were just in the brewery market. And from then on, we stayed in the brewery market and went into industrials.  I can't remember when we did that.  I think about 1949, 1950.  And then gradually as the time went on we took up more industrials.  We took over I suppose you might say, one or two brokers [i.e. jobbers] who didn't quite make it -  in those days, they weren't enormous - to help them out and take them over if they couldn't afford to carry on the business.  Today you'd get hammered, or a few years ago you'd get hammered, but in those days I think they tried to club together so as not to create any trouble for private people, basically.

BA:  Were there any other people from your background working in the office, who'd come from that part of London?

AA:  No.  

BA:  How would you describe the backgrounds of the other people in the firm during your early days?

AA:  Well, I think they were all, although I never discussed it with them, I would have guessed they all came from - well put it this way, they didn't leave school at fourteen.  They went on to what they used to call in those days secondary schools or whatever until they were sixteen, seventeen. And I think this is where they came from, the majority of them, all of them I would guess.  But that didn't deter me at the time, and I don't think it worried them to any extent. My language was slightly different at that time to what most of them were.  But once I realised that I was possibly going to go places, I tried to speak differently - not speak their language, because I wouldn't want to put that on, because I don't think it would have got me anywhere; so they just took me as I came.

BA:  What did the people at home think about the job you were doing?  Did they have much idea about what the Stock Exchange was?

AA:  Nothing at all, nothing at all.  To be honest, nor did I.  I only learned about it by getting the job and then being so interested that I studied the whole thing. But otherwise I don't think my father had even heard of it, to be honest, with all due respects to him.  Nor the rest of my family I suppose. My sisters had never heard of it.  I think I must have been the only one leaving home going to work in the mornings with a suit and a collar and tie. It really was a great thrill for me from that point of view.  I don't think anybody knew anything about it in those days.  Because it was never advertised. It was never advertised until a few years ago really and  truly.  When I say a few, I mean 20 years.  But I shouldn't think people ever thought about it forty years ago. 

BA:  Do you recall what happened to the firm when the War broke out? Did a lot of people go off to join the forces?

AA:  Oh yes, quite a few went, that's why I say I think it was of great benefit to me to sort of step in.  We managed.  The business was never so vast during the War, not in the early part of the War, put it that way; because I left in 41, so I only did about 18 months after people started to go, but at least it was enough to set me on the road to where I finished up.

BA:  Did most of the partners go off?

AA:  Some of them did.  I remember Mr. Jack Durlacher did. He was a prisoner of War for about seven, eight years from memory.  But then again, by the time I came back, everybody was back, so I had to - well, I didn't have to start all over again, because business was quite good, and I went in with the fellow who I took over from as transfer clerk, for that period of time, until I got the offer of being a red button and then transferring to a blue button.

BA:  Do you remember what it was like going into the Stock Exchange, the floor of the House, when you first started as a blue button?  Was it a very intimidating place?

AA:  Oh, it was horrifying, horrifying. Because I felt as if I was the odd man out, because of where I came from, where I was brought up and the school I went to.  And I'm pretty sure I was at the time.  But after I'd been there a while, I used to talk to the people and there used to be a lot of one-man firms in the market at that time, and you get to talk to them. They took me as I came, which was a great help to me.  So I wasn't too worried about it.  It took me about three or four months to get used to it.  Every morning you'd walk in there and there was an enormous building, enormous dome, and all the people standing about, and you'd know who they are, you know where they've come from, and you know where you've come from, obviously, and suddenly you think to yourself, where can I go from here?  But as I say, I talked to people after a while, and they talked to me and called me Tommy, and this that, and the whole thing went absolutely perfect.

BA:  Were there many jobbers at the time when you first went into the Stock Exchange?

AA:  Oh yes there were lots; well, I say lots because there were quite a few one-man firms.

BA:  What kind of business did the one-man firms do? Were they doing different types of bargains, different sized bargains to firms like Durlacher?

AA:  Oh yes, they would only do the small bargain. But what they were - you had a lot of people, and I mean a large percentage of people, would always try to give these one-man firms a turn. So they'd go up, for example, and say, 'I want to buy 5,000 ICI and I'm prepared to give this for them, so if you can get them cheaper, you can take a turn out of it for yourself'. So what they did then, of course they came to myself or other jobbers in the market and said, 'I can give this for 5,000 ICI'.  The price was never that far wrong, but what it did it gave the man concerned a turn, which is basically all they could live on. So they may have made £200 or £300 out of it, and it didn't do any jobber any harm, because they never got big business - just a small man - and they did it to give him a turn.  He was quite happy.  He'd most probably go home if he had one or two of those a day, rather than sit about there all day long.  But it was a fabulous set-up for people like that.  Where they came from I wouldn't know.  They were there when I got there.  I don't know how long they'd been there.

BA:  Where did they go to in the end, presumably they began to disappear after a while?

AA:  Oh they just disappeared.  Most of them, you see, were pretty old anyway.  Most of them were fifties upwards and I mean upwards, maybe seventy or something like that, and suddenly they disappeared. They weren't there for many years after 1950 and suddenly - I don't know how many jobbers there were from then on.  I really wouldn't like to hazard a guess actually.  

BA:  But your impression was there were certainly a lot more than say during the 1960s?

AA:  Oh, yes, certainly, I think all the one-man firms disappeared, and there were even mergers in those days. 

BA:  Really?

AA:  Oh yes, King & Co was a firm that went bankrupt, or nearly went bankrupt.  He was bailed out.  That was more or less a one-man firm, actually, but he was a bit big, and he got too big, and so of course that went wrong.  Then there were quite a few mergers.  We merged with - well we took over, I suppose one might say - Albert E Sharp, 1960 I suppose.  That was just a merger.  I believe they had the money to carry on anyway, nothing untoward about it.  Then Blackwell & Co was another firm that went broke, so we took over them; yes we took them over, because most of the firm came to us.  So maybe jobbers got together on that one, I believe; not quite sure now.  And so it went on.  And then of course the whole thing got bigger and bigger and we moved to offices in Austral House. Then everything started to be computerised which made things a lot easier for everybody concerned. The books were much bigger. We used to run bigger books, and then everything was done on computers.  When I first started, computers were never heard of. Nobody ever told us how to run the books or what size, we just ran them. Then when the company results came out, we didn't have to wait for the analyst to tell us what he thought about them. We used to look at them, make up our own minds and go on making trade. Basically we never stopped making a price all the way through the day when it came out.  It just went on and on.

BA:  You mentioned you were given the nickname Tommy, how did you get that?

AA:  To be honest I don't really know.  All I can recall, when I first went there Pat Durlacher brought it up somehow or other, because I was a sort of five foot nothing gentleman - I wouldn't say gentleman! - five foot nothing. And the name Tommy, I honestly don't know.  It came and was stuck all through the rest of my life.  Not only in the office, then when I went down in the market I became known as Tommy and it stuck for 40 years, and still now.  If I walk out now and meet some of the boys at the race track and one thing and another, 'Hallo Tommy'. It's incredible.  And the majority of people in there, really didn't know my name was Arthur.  Not for years and years and years.  It was always Tommy.  That's how it came in.  It was fantastic.

BA:  You said that Pat Durlacher was the partner you were standing with when you were first authorised and you said you couldn't have hoped to have had a better person in terms of learning about jobbing.  Was he the person who influenced you most when you were learning?

AA:  Absolutely. For me he was a jobber out of this world. I was a blue button with him all the time, and I learned a lot there.  Because he didn't mind me asking questions, providing he wasn't talking or dealing or anything like that. He didn't mind me asking questions. He didn't mind telling me what he'd done. He didn't mind telling me why he's changing the price without doing any business in it, and everything like that.  And he used to be fabulous from a jobber's point of view.  I personally - and I don't think I'm the only one - I think he's one of the best there ever were. 

BA:  What made him different from other jobbers? What would you say were his qualities?

AA:  Well, I don't really know.  I didn't know at the time, but I knew later when I started mixing with other people, from that point of view.  His foresight seemed absolutely tremendous. And he was never afraid to take on orders in a quarter or half a million or whatever, and he never changed the price on them, although if he wanted to change a price, if he thought it was wrong, he did not mind losing money on it in order to straighten the book out.  And that's what I thought made him a good jobber.  He was never afraid to cut the book if it was wrong and he was never afraid to build the book up if he thought it was right and he could make a good turn out of it.

BA:  Were you dealing in stores shares at the time?

AA:  No, industrials, just industrials. Because then when we got bigger we took up the stores market and we took up textiles through mergers.  We didn't take them up. They came when we merged with other people. They brought their books with them. One lot was textiles, another was stores, and so it went on.  And the brewery book, we always ran the brewery book, except that we went with another firm called Bone Oldham at the time, they used to ...

Tape 1 side 2

BA:  You had a brewery book and Bone Oldham had a brewery book and you were joint.  Were you dealing in the same stocks?

AA:  No, no, as I say, half of the brewery book was split.  Half the brewery book we had.  But they were different stocks.  We never had the same stocks.  We used to have one partner, going back to the early fifties, a chap named Jerome Briggs, he used to run one book only, and that was a Distiller book.  He used to do a lot of business in the Distiller book, but he always took Friday the 13th off, always, as long as I ever knew him.  Apparently the reason being, one Friday the 13th he came up, I don't know how long ago it was or when, it cost him a lot of money, so  he decided then he'd never come up again on Friday 13th, and he never did for the rest of his life.  It's incredible.  But it was such a wonderful crowd.

BA:  Do you have any other memories of the partners in the firm at that time?  I assume it was still a relatively small firm in the early fifties.

AA:  Yes.  Not really, but it soon started to get big.  

BA:  Was Esmond Durlacher the senior partner?

AA:  He was senior partner. I suppose anybody who works for a senior partner will say he's the best, and I'll go along with ours and say he was the best.  I'm pretty sure he wasn't far short of the best, if nothing else. But to me, or to us in the firm, he was absolutely first class and he knew his job inside out.  His son works there now, but he was absolutely first class.

BA:  Again for similar reasons that Pat Durlacher was?

AA:  I never conversed with him to that extent.  He'd always pass the time of day. He'd always ask how things are going. I think the whole firm, he got on very well with everybody.  But of course he was away on business a hell of a lot of the time, with meetings, and one thing and another, being in business. So although we didn't see him that much in the latter years, he never really did a lot of jobbing at the time.  But apart from him, the rest of them, they were just everyday people really with a job to do, and knew how to do it, came from the right school, most of them - well, all of them came from the right school I suppose.  

BA:  Can you remember the pitch that you were first standing on with Pat Durlacher?  Were you by one of these pillars?

AA:  Oh yes we were by one of these pillars.

BA:  What part of the building were you in?

AA:  Right in the middle of the building.  When it was demolished, the mining market was demolished first.  Well we were still standing in there.  And, yes, we were more or less smack in the middle, right under the dome, so it was absolutely terrific.  

BA:  How many were with you on that particular book?

AA:  There were only Pat Durlacher, and myself. We used to have the books like that.  Michael Bennett was another man. Young, very go-ahead.  He was fantastic. He helped me.  I can't remember now who else was there, Michael Bennett, Pat Durlacher, myself, the three of us used to be on this book, on the industrial book, when it first started.  But as I say it didn't stay twenty stocks for long. It got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then this went up to 1970 and we were a pretty large sized firm in 1970, and I got the offer of a partnership.  Which was really....

BA:  How did that come about?  You'd had to wait a long time for it.

AA:  Well I thought it was never going to come, because prior to that, I forgot to mention, prior to that, I used to be on a sort of a bonus, depending on the books, like a per centage on what money the firm made.  And I suppose the offer of partnership came because maybe I was pretty good at what I was doing.  Because it didn't happen too often.  I think there were three of us, who didn't come from relatives and friends.  And I was the second one to be offered a partnership.  Which obviously I grabbed, I grabbed with two hands, because it was unheard of.  It wasn't in my way of life whatsoever.  But it came and I accepted it and it worked as far as I was concerned.

BA:  Did your role in the firm change in any way?

AA:  No, no I did exactly the same job except that I then had people with me.  I tried to teach them what the jobbing system was and how to do it.  But it's not easy to teach anybody anything. It's a flair I suppose really, what you're born with. Maybe not born with, but it's something that you pick up.  For example when I first started dealing, not the first time, but the first five years, ten years, everybody used to make prices in fives, tens, twenty-fives and fifties.  And I thought to myself, we are all doing the same thing. So I decided I would change the system inasmuch that instead of making it in twenty-five, I would make it in thirty-seven and a half or sixty-two and a half, or whatever.  This went down hilarious actually, nobody could understand what it was.  Then you see another thing about it, of course, is you make three-six in twenty-five and somebody says what about 150,000. You make an entirely different price altogether, nothing to do with three-six.  They could be thirty-seven - forty instead of thirty-three - six, in 150,000, depending on which way you felt the market was going to go and trying to read the man who wanted to do the business, which was a lot of it, you see.  Now you can't teach people that.  That can only come by sitting, and watching and trying to pick it up from there.  I must have had a flair for something like that. Whether it was a flair for gambling, possibly, because that's all the business really was.  But then again, in those days the market weren't bad.  You either had a bull market for three four five seven years, and you had a bear market for two three four five years, and the only thing to try and judge was when you think the time was to change from bull to bear or vice-versa.  But it never really showed itself, so one had to be very careful from that point of view. But you can reckon once the bull market starts it goes on for two or three years anyway and you adjust your prices for that, and you run your books according to that.

BA:  Do you have any recollections of times when you made that decision to go from being a bull to bear?

AA:  Not really. No, I don't think one can say that. Because in 1974, the bear market, the bull market more or less stopped overnight and the bear market started and quite a few people were caught on the hop, possibly including myself.  But then when you get the limit, the buyers used to buy them on the way down, so you can always get yourself in a position to be a bear by selling the stock.  Because the fellow said (you make three-six), 'I'll give 300 for stock' ([I had made] 303-6), 'I'll give 300 for stock'.  Then it's up to you to say, 'right'.  You sell them to him, and then you call the things 295-8.  You can't tell people that. Unless they can sit down and watch it go on it's impossible to tell them.  But I feel that I did tell one or two people how to  do the business and they made a go of it.  But it's not easy to tell them.  Because it's the sort of business where it's a gambling thing and you've got to take the gamble, and it's not easy when it's vast sums of money involved.

BA:  Do you have any recollections when you took a gamble and it was very successful?

AA:  Well, yes, I have actually.  I did some business with a firm of brokers there many years ago in a stock called Bermid - Bermid Industries - and I was short and the market kept going up and up and I kept selling them. And I kept selling them 50,000 a time on certain margin prices and I was getting myself in one hell of a mess - and I was, to be honest.  And I thought I can't be in a worse mess than I am in now. So I went out there one day and I said [to the broker], 'Bermid, I don't think I'm not far wrong. I'll offer you 50,000 at £1', whatever it was, '£1.37', something like that.  So I said I'd wait for an answer if I can. So I waited for an answer and 'we don't want them'.  He was the only man I had who was buying them. 'Oh.'  So I went back to my pitch and waited ten minutes and went back out again, and said, 'Look, I'll offer you 50 Bermid at £1.32. Let me know.' So I went back. Nothing happened.  And then the next day, I was still in one hell of a mess, a terrible mess. I forget how many I was short of. So the next day I went back again and offered him some more lower down, and in the finish I hadn't dealt and I had got the things down to £1.25.  And there I was sitting very nice and pretty there, and I started to make money.  They went down and down.  He just wasn't interested.  But that may have been luck. There was obviously a bit of luck there. But I wasn't afraid. Once I got myself into a hell of a mess, another 50,000 didn't make any difference.  And there it was, and that was one that came off.

BA:  Do you recall any that didn't come off?

AA:  Oh yes, quite a few didn't come off.  Well quite a few came off.  I always reckoned that if you could hit seven right out of ten, then you must make money unless the three that you didn't, cost you a colossal fortune.  Otherwise you must make money.  Really.  I had one share called London & Liverpool.  I can't remember how they came about. We were asked to take them up by a broker, and they were absolutely - they were nothing, relatively nothing.  And they went straight up. They got a new idea out, putting TVs showing sporting programs in the pubs.  And the shares went from nothing, practically nothing, to £10.  And I remember I did one big deal, and I wouldn't do the other half of the deal when they were about £6.  I wouldn't buy any more. I didn't like it. This was over the weekend. And they used to be tipped every other week in the paper. They were tipped, tipped, tipped, and I thought they can't be.  Because they didn't return on them whatsoever. And then suddenly I came in on the Monday morning. There was a tip again. I rung up my seller. I said, 'Do you still want to sell that quarter of a million?'  He said, 'No'.  And they went straight to £10.  I couldn't believe that they would get there. And then within a matter of weeks, they started plummeting down, and in the finish people must have lost a lot of money.  They went broke because it just wasn't catching on.  The pubs weren't interested in it, and those that tried it out, it didn't bring them any more custom in, so they couldn't afford to keep the televisions, and they were getting all these televisions back.  They weren't just small televisions. They were the big ones.  That one cost me a lot of money.

BA:  Did you feel it was important to know much about the companies in whose stock you were dealing?

AA:  Yes, but I didn't personally believe in going to talk to chairmen and that sort of thing.  Well I don't think I ever did. I only ever went once.  I still think it's wrong today, that Chairmen should talk to people in the City and the big boys always get to know everything before the small lads. And this always I think did happen, and I still believe it does.  You couldn't do much about it, but I suppose they're entitled to know before the small man really, but I don't believe that it gives the small man a chance. Because as I say, you pick up the papers yesterday, and see a share down 57p, because a broker writes it down.  But still that's neither here nor there really. But I didn't go to many companies.  I used to go to see the brokers of the company and talk to them about it, but I don't think they knew too much about what was going on anyway.  It would be around the year end and that sort of thing.

BA:  What was the value in going to talk to them?

AA: Because I think you found out what their ideas were on the stocks.  We were always willing to listen to other people.  If you were dealing in a stock, they used to have what we called brokers' lunches, and we used to go to the brokers, and they used to have the clients. They'd always have somebody there from the firm, and you used to talk to them. I used to go to them quite a lot.  Obviously one has to.  But apart from that I only ever visited one company.  I didn't believe you learnt much by walking around the company.  You could see if they're busy or not, but if they're not busy, the local people know anyway and so they tell you.

BA:  What about other people in the firm, did they have different ideas?  Did they like to have contact with the companies?

AA:  Well in the later years, you see, we used to h ave the analysts, and they used to visit all the companies, so it wasn't necessary for any of them to go.  When I first started, the analysts were never heard of.  But then in the 1970s, the analysts where there.  There used to be more than one. There used to be four, five or six maybe, and they used to go to various parts of the country to visit these firms, so it wasn't necessary for partners or anything like that, or the dealers concerned to go.  We all had the analysts.  We all used to say, 'Well you'll have to go and have a look at so-and-so and this other company, and you go and have a look at that one'.  And then they'd spend a day up there, and when they came back, they'd write an essay and give us their view on the thing.  But apart from that, it wasn't necessary for people to go.

BA:  What about the older jobbers, the people you'd started with, like Pat Durlacher, did they feel it was useful to know something about the company or were they really people who stayed within the walls of the Stock Exchange?

AA:  They stayed within the walls of the Stock Exchange, but they felt in latter years, obviously that it was beneficial, because otherwise other people were doing it. So no matter how old-fashioned you were, it had to be done, and gradually the whole system changed and everybody was going.

BA:  Did the brokers ever come to you for information about stock?

AA:  Oh yes, a hell of a lot. What I used to do in the finish,  I used to put them onto..., 'ring up my stats man and have a word with him'. Especially when you could say, 'Well he only went there yesterday, or two or three weeks ago', and you can have a chat with him about it.

BA:  This continued right through when you retired?  

AA:  No, not really because then they started - they all had their own ideas, their own stats people, and everybody was a stats man basically, except the people on the floor of the House, making the prices.

BA:  What were the kind of things they'd want to know about?

AA:  Well basically all they wanted to know was what you thought of the company.  They most probably, when they were asking you the question, they had their own views anyway.  But I suppose the reason for that being that if it differed from mine, or from theirs, they might say, why do you say this and why do you say that?  Of course, if it didn't agree, I suppose they've got two answers, so I suppose they've got to put it into one.  And don't forget, also, being a jobber and a partner in a jobbing firm, you most probably do talk to some of the people, like Slater Walker. I used to talk to Jim Slater quite a bit, and if you did that you could have something to say about a company.  But not too often, not too often.  Because there were never any secrets given away by chairmen anyway, and obviously never any secrets given away by me.  Because we didn't get any because we never spoke to chairmen.  You'd only speak to the chairman when you go to lunches, and that sort of thing.  So from that point of view I don't think that we learnt too much from Chairmen in those days, not like it is today.  Today the Chairman says everything, from what I can gather; still, maybe that's right.

BA: How had things progressed with you?  Were you being moved around from one pitch to the other or did you basically stay on the same pitch?

AA:  No, I stayed on the industrials until 1974, and then I went on to the South African Gold Mines.  They came to us through a firm called Blackwell, who we took over and as the market in the industrials wasn't absolutely brilliant at the time, I went onto the South African Gold Mines, and I must confess I wish I hadn't.

BA:  Why's that?  Was it a difficult transition from industrials?

AA:  Absolutely, so different, because on industrials you're dealing with London, or England, and possibly America and something like that, but at least you knew what was going on in the English stocks.  But in the South African stock you could be dealing with Johannesburg, America, all over the world.  And nobody knew, well least of all me, knew what was going on in any of them. So I was trying to be brave there and making prices in tens and twenties and fifties, and it cost me a lot of money, and I mean a lot of money.  I think I did this for about eighteen months, and I won't put on record how much it cost me, but it did cost me a lot of money. I've no idea how, because it started off terrific, and I thought it would carry on.  But then you were getting all these people from America, or South Africa, coming on to what they call the arbitrage people, and of course they were kicking me from here to hell and back.  It was absolutely ghastly.  We gave them up after a while.  I gave it up before actually, but then we packed it up altogether. Because you got a kick up the backside for nothing, because you couldn't trust the people from outside. Whereas if you got a London firm who wants to deal in English stocks, you could trust him.  He'd come up to you and tell you, depending on your reputation, if you were honest enough, which most of them were, they'd come up and tell you what they wanted to do in big lines of stock.  They'd say, 'Well if you sell me 100,000 of these, I'll leave you another order for 500,000'.  And it was left that way.  Nobody knew about it.  Where today, from what I can read in the papers today, everybody knows there's a big order around within two minutes.  Whereas then, you could (I'm saying in the 1970s), you could have an order in the market there, leave it with the jobber and nobody knows anything about it for maybe two or three days.  And that's the difference today.  We never talked about orders in those days.  We'd never change the price and if we managed to do it beneficial to the broker then we'd give him the turn back. So from that point of view it was absolutely brilliant because nobody knew what business you had. And if you bought half a million shares and you didn't want anybody to know, you didn't want to offer them, you thought, it looks a good bargain, 'we'll keep those and we'll run the price up', you could deal like that, because nobody knew you had half a million.  Whereas today, no sooner is an order in half a million done, than the price on the screen's changing. Everybody chases the price on the screen and the poor jobber, I say the poor jobber, has got no chance of getting his stock back.  And that was the big advantage.  And if you can play poker you can play the game of jobbing.

BA: Do you think jobbers were gamblers, they had that cast of mind?

AA:  Oh yes, absolutely; well from my point of view I'm absolutely sure they wer. Because when we merged we used to have a fellow called Sir Nigel Mordaunt. He was absolutely first class at it.  He could buy half a million or a million shares, nobody would know. He didn't even put it in the book, so anybody who looked over your shoulder at the book, when you opened it up, it's not even there. He'd put it in at the end of the day.  And nobody would know.  You could go along and push the price up, up, up and you could make a fortune.  And that's how it was done in those days.  People didn't know. You didn't have to book it in the book until you got to the office in the afternoon, and so it was all - then you'd book it in.  But it was a different game.  Nobody knew the prices.  They knew the prices you were making but you can make any price you like, but nobody knew you did the deal. And a lot of it was on trust with the brokers concerned. Because sometimes they'd pick you. Sometimes they'd pick Smith Brothers, or Pinchin or anybody like that, if they think that is the best man to do the business with, because they know they won't get spoilt by it.  And nobody spoilt them, because nobody knew anything about the business, going back a few years, because it was all done, because the broker picked the man he knew, and the broker knew the people he could trust in certain shares.  And that's how it went on.  It was absolutely terrific.

BA:  Did brokers like to have particular jobbers to do certain kinds of business with?

AA:  Oh yes, no question about it. Because, as I say, you take any share you like, if you made the price consistently in 25 and 50,000 shares at a time, and another jobber might make it only in tens and maybe 25s, well if he's [i.e. the broker] got a big order, he's going to go to the man who's already making it in 25 or 50,000, because, if he regularly does that, then he says, 'I've got more chance with him, so I'll go and do it with them.'  And more often than not the business always got done.

BA:  Did you find in your case that there were particular brokers who would like you, Tommy Anderson, and would come up and deal with you more often than not.

AA:  Oh yes. Well, it depended basically on the price of the share you were making and the size you were making it in.

BA:  So you still basically had to be competitive to the other jobbers?

AA:  Oh absolutely, competitive yes.  The name didn't mean anything unless you were competitive anyway.  They don't just say, 'Well I'll go to Tommy because he's a friend of mine.'  That didn't work.  But what did work if you were competitive, and you make it in the market, and the size of the market and possibly you got business on which you weren't afraid to tell him anyway, and so that went on. So they don't just go to you just because you're a friend.  That didn't work.

BA: Did you see cases where jobbers did sometimes get too close to brokers?

AA:  No, I don't think so.  Not unless they were - no because most of the jobbers - if the broker went to the jobber he's got to be competitive, and have the market.  You wouldn't always be the market. What I mean by that is you weren't always making it in 50s and 100s.  Sometimes you only made it in ten because you weren't sure what you wanted to do.  So therefore the man wouldn't come to you that day.  He'd go elsewhere.  But I don't think it was a question of friends going to [friends] or whatever. They wouldn't come to me unless they thought I was the market and they wouldn't go to Smith Brothers unless they thought he was the market.

BA: Just to wrap up the story about the African Gold market, how long did you stay with that?

AA:  Eighteen months?  Yes between eighteen months and two years.

BA:  And then what happened?

AA:  Then I went back on the industrial market.

BA:  By that stage did Durlacher have lots of small industrial pitches dealing with different stocks?

AA:  Oh yes, we had quite a lot.  I don't know how many stocks we dealt in.  It must have been hundreds and hundreds.  A far cry from the day when we had fifty.  We were in all the industrial markets, engineering market, store market, in 1970 - middle 1970s; yes, we had all of those.

BA: I want to ask you some more general questions about jobbing and different aspects of jobbing.  Did you have a particular approach.  Did you prefer to be a bear jobber or a bull jobber or ...?

AA:  I think I was known basically as a bear jobber.  If there was a bear market going, I think I was pretty good at being a bear jobber.  But you could only do that on what the market was going to do.  If the market looked like going straight up, which it did after the slump in 74-6, then you'd got to turn yourself round.  You've got to say, 'you're stupid this way. You've got to be a bull otherwise it's going to cost you a fortune anyway.'  It didn't always work. It does sometimes.  But I think I was known basically as a bear man.  But you could still be a bull even if you were a bear overall.  That was easy enough.  You could run either a bull or a bear.  But I used to run a bear book, I presume, better than a bull book - I should think - because I didn't mind selling bears, because I was that way inclined.  Our whole business was an absolute gamble, whatever.

BA:  Did takeovers or stake-building figure much in your experience?  Would brokers often ask you for assistance if they were trying to build up a stake in a company for a client?

AA:  No, I think it only happened once with me.  And that was, I can't remember, middle seventies, I presume.  Must have been middle seventies and a broker asked me, and said, 'Look, I've had a word with my senior partner and he thinks you're going to be the best man to do this job.  I want to buy - Babcock & Wilcocks was the stock - and I want to buy them.'  So I said, 'Are you telling me I'm the only one?'  He said, 'Yes, my senior partner says he thinks you could be the best man for it.'  And so I said 'fair enough'.  He said, 'carte blanche', whatever.  But when you do that, they know that you're only going to take what they call a turn on the market.  You never rip them off or anything like that.  And this was the only one I had, and the price didn't move for two months or more.  He'd bought a few, then suddenly the price got out and they went up six shillings in one day.  But you see you could keep it quiet then.  If he kept quiet and the senior partner kept quiet and I kept quiet and just went on in the normal way...

Tape 2 side 1

BA: [Do you recall] some of the big contested takeovers, for example, ICI trying to gobble up Courtaulds, or the other way around in the early sixties, or GEC and AEI later in the sixties...?

AA:  No, that wasn't my stocks unfortunately.  I don't believe - I can't recall any like that.  No.

BA:  Did price wars between jobbers ever break out?

AA: Not in the early days, but it did in the latter days.    We used to make these price agreements, which, well I'm not sure that any of us agreed with them, because if you make a price agreement, it's so easily broken.  But it did happen.  There was no animosity between jobbers nonetheless.  We were still the best of friends.  But suddenly there'd be somebody who would be breaking the price agreement.  For example, if you're making 3-6 and you could always turn round and say, 'If you want to sell them at four and a half, I'll give you four and a half.'  But it's so easily broken.  But it did go on.  In some cases possibly justified where there was no market turnover.  That was fair comment, actually.  But I believe that price agreements weren't really market makers.  Unfortunate, because all it did in actual fact was to give business away to other jobbers.  I'm not talking about myself particularly, but I'm talking about any of us.  You've been price making, if you made 3-6, and he made one and a half, three and a half over there, he could turn around to him and say, 'Look, they're 3-6 over there.  Do you want to give me three?'  It went on.

BA:  Were particular firms known for breaking price agreements?

AA:  No, I don't think so no.  Not any particular one.  It was just something. You broke it that way.  It wasn't literally 3-6, four and a half-seven and a half business, it was just a question of what somebody else is making. 'Do you want to deal with me on that price?'  So it wasn't really.  Nobody really broke the price agreements. They were pretty honest from that point of view.

BA:  Did you find you were doing many joint books with other firms?

AA:  Not a lot, no. We had a few with Bisgood, in the engineering sector.  Not easy to do.  I couldn't figure out how you could run a joint book because your ideas may be different from his, and it just didn't work.  But we used to have some joint books where we used to try to make it work, but it really was never on the cards, to my mind anyway.

BA:  What would be the kind of things that could go wrong?

AA:  Well, I might take a view one way and he might take
a view another way.  Although we'd do our position, that was always the same, but if I wanted to deal in 100,000 shares at a price, I'd have to go across to him, see what he thinks about it. He might have said, 'no', or he might have said 'yes', but there could always be a disagreement in the middle somewhere.  Especially if there was a disagreement and it went wrong.

BA:  Can you give any examples?

AA:  No, not really.

BA:  How would you resolve them?  You talked them out between yourselves?

AA:  Oh yes, they were resolved without any animosity about it.  No arguments or anything like that.  It just sorted itself out without any trouble between us.  Brian Winterflood - we used to do a lot with him actually.  He was with Bisgood.  And I think we possibly only had them with him, or with Bisgood, not with him.  Nobody else.

BA:  Did put-throughs figure much in your experience as a jobber?

AA:  Oh yes, put-throughs.  There were quite a lot of put-throughs being done.

BA:  What did you think of these, because I believe that jobbers often felt that brokers were in fact taking a lot of business out of their hands.

AA:  Yes, I think that was possibly so.  But the point is, the put-through business always gave you a chance to close your book anyway if you wanted to.  You could always take a certain amount of stock or sell a certain amount of stock whichever, so I don't think it was that bad from the business point of you. If the broker himself hasn't checked the put-through price with you, then the broker could be in a lot of trouble, because he could lose all his stock, or have to buy all his stock one way. But more often than not they came to you and asked the put-through basis in a certain number of shares, and you could always turn round and say, 'Look I would like 25,000 or 50,000 just to close my book', or sell him 50,000 just to level your book off.  I don't think there was any animosity about that sort of business.  Everything went off OK, fine.

BA:  What about underwriting?  Was that something that Durlachers were involved in?  Wedd was involved in?

AA:  Oh yes.  That used to be done by what I call the committee that Wedd used to have, so it really didn't concern you in any way whatsoever - well, me, put it that way, being just a dealer on the floor of the House; so nothing from that point of view.

BA:  Did you find as time passed that the size of bargains you were doing was increasing, say, comparing with the days when you first started as an authorised dealer?

AA:  Oh, from when I first started, yes, definitely. But in the latter years, it didn't really. When I first started, as I say, you never did big business on the market floor. I suppose it must have got more sizeable from the sixties onwards, because the firms were getting bigger, so therefore you could afford to take bigger positions. There was more cash available. You could always borrow money from the bank, and so I think from '60 onwards it was getting bigger.  And institutions had more money, and as time went on it got bigger and bigger.  You used to do a lot of business. But the big business always used to come... You couldn't blame the broker. If he had a buyer in a million shares, for example, you couldn't blame him for trying find a seller of a million shares, to put the two together. Because that was his business anyway, and he came in and gave the jobber the turn, so that was fair enough.  Although as I say, he could lose it if he was not careful.  But I think that's the reason why in the latter years, a lot of the leaks came about. Because of that.  Somebody used to ring up - well, I presume  they used to ring up other clients and say, 'I want to buy a million so and so and so and so'. Of course he'd ring up his friend and say, 'Look you'd better go and buy yourself 50,000'. So the thing was ruined from the start, because the people outside, you couldn't blame him for trying to get on the band-wagon.

BA: I suppose we talk about, now, a lot about things like insider trading and so on. Of course before the eighties there was no law against it.  What was your impression about the Stock Exchange as far as that went?  Was there a lot of that kind of thing?

AA:  I'm almost sure there was a lot of that kind of thing. Because all the takeovers that came about, I can only remember one in all my life, and that was very early days, when Courtaulds made a bid for British Celanese, and that really came out of the blue.  Nobody had an inkling what was going on.  But then in later years everybody knew what everybody else was taking over.  But it was never big in those days, except that one.  That was a very very big one.  It came out so peaceful, that everybody was surprised at it.  Nobody leaked it. But nowadays you've only got to see the Chairman going into another company and somebody's on the phone. That's how I think they start. But the leaks, well there are leaks all over the place now.  I presume there were then. Insider trading just didn't mean takeovers, obviously. It meant if the company's doing well and the word got around and so people come in and deal.  So insider trading - it's never been stopped.  I personally can't see how they can.

BA: Was there much trading on personal account that went on?

BA:  Oh yes, a lot. I did one myself, in the early fifties, what I call PA dealing.  I only ever did one, because I went away on holiday, and came back and lost £100, where I could have made £1,000 if I'd been there.  But still, that's neither here nor there.  Well, without them, you turnover would have been down 50% anyway.  Really and truly they made the market these, I called them spivs because that's basically what they were.  They were in it for the turn, and if you sold a man 50,000 shares of whatever the stock is and they went up 2/- or 2/6d, 3/-, you could always guarantee that that 50,000 shares is going to come back out again, and you knew where to go and buy them.  That was not a bad thing, I don't think.  Well I don't think it was.  Personally I think it increased our turnover by 50%.  So as far as I was concerned, there was nothing detrimental in that whatsoever.  It's still being done today.  And that's not insider trading, it's just, well, gambling.  If you want to back a horse.

BA: I'm just interested in how it worked in general terms.  Would you sell the stock off your own book to a broker?

AA:  Oh yes.  I'd make the same sort of price to him as I'd make to anyone else. If the broker comes in and says, 'What are they?' I say, 'they're 2-3'. 'Well, I buy 50,000.'  And sell him 50,000.

BA: And how would it work if you wanted to do a deal in your own name?  Would you instruct a broker in the way a normal client would do?

AA:  Well I wouldn't do it, being a jobber.  I never did it, being a jobber, because it influences your book, and influences your mind on your book, which I think would be wrong.

BA:  But how would a jobber do it if he did?

AA:  Well he'd go to a broker; yes, he'd get a broker to go and do it for him.  But as I say I never did it, just the one I'm telling you about was when I was only a clerk anyway, so I wasn't running a book then.  But I never did it in all the years I ran a book.  I never dealt PA on my own book.  Because as I say it influences you, and you'd never be the same again.

BA:  Did you ever feel in the earlier days that there were jobbers who were more interested in looking after their own book?

AA:  No, I don't think so.  From what I know, and who I know, I think the answer to that would be no.  I don't say they didn't deal in other peoples' books, other firms.  I think that's fair enough. But I would say no, nobody dealt on their own book.  It happened once or twice with us, actually, late 1970s, I suppose it might have been, when they weren't allowed to, and of course they got pushed out.  They were told to go, no question there.  But I would say it was never ever done..., well, I don't know.  I'll say it was never done over the years I've been there, certainly not.

BA:  We've already talked a little bit about the contacts that you as a jobber might have with the firms in whose stocks you traded.  Did you ever have any contact with the clients outside of the Stock Exchange?

AA:  No, no.  Not contact as such.  But you get to know certain institutions. But I don't think one has with clients... I very rarely spoke to clients.  I might have gone to Hill Samuels or people like that, for lunch and I suppose one might say that they are institutional clients, but one never got to discussing what they wanted to do or anything like that.  At least I didn't anyway.  I just used to run the book and talk to company brokers, but never to clients really.

BA:  How did things progress now, after you became a partner in 1970?  Did you - you mentioned in '74, you went on to the gold book, for a short time, and then did you more or less stay on the industrial stocks until you retired?

AA:  Oh yes, I went back to the industrial book and stayed there until I retired.  I retired just before the Big Bang, 1984.  I'd had this trouble. I would have stayed an extra two years after I was sixty actually, if it hadn't have come up, but as I'd had it long enough - I think I'd had it about five years, then - so I decided at sixty that I wasn't really well enough to carry on the business.  I just went and had the operation and retired from there.

BA: And when was that?  

AA:  That was in 1984.

BA:  How would you contrast the firm of Wedd Durlacher in 1984 with F & N Durlacher which you joined in 1938?

AA:  Oh, no comparison.  Wedd Durlacher - how many staff did we have? 400 plus. Partners? 50-60.  Money-wise? Millions and millions against a million.  No comparison whatsoever.  Mind you I think that was the reason basically: I would have thought it's not so easy today for a person like myself, who walked into the City in 1984 and would come out in 2024, like I did walking in in 1938 and coming out in 1984.

BA:  How did the firm cope with all the mergers that had taken place during the period of your career? And there were some very big mergers like with Wedd Jefferson? How did you find these personally?  Did you find the character of the firm changed?

AA:  No, I don't think so.  I think the two firms..., as I say, everybody was on a par with everybody else and we knew everybody else, so there was no bother at all. Everybody just walked in the office one morning and just sat next to each other, and the whole business carried straight through.  No I don't think there was any trouble there.  I think in actual fact, really and truly it went very smoothly indeed.  We never had any trouble in any of the takeovers from when I first started right up until the last one of Barclays Bank.  The whole thing was as smooth as smooth as it could be.  Absolutely.  Nothing wrong with it.  Nobody ever said it should be or shouldn't be, or this should have happened, or that should have happened.  As far as I knew the whole business went very smoothly.

BA:  Did you find, as time passed, that there were fewer jobbers that you were competing against?

AA:  Well yes, because as I say, the one-man firms disappeared, then a lot of mergers took place and then in the finish you came down with more or less the three biggest jobbers.

BA:  Did that make jobbing any easier?

AA:  No.

BA:  Did you find it was still very competitive?

AA:  Oh, it was still very competitive. The biggest competitor, as far as I was concerned, was Smith Brothers; and I'm very pleased to see that they're carrying on today as a jobber, purely and simply, no back-up behind them. Well, no back-up, I mean they weren't taken over. The name still goes.  Whereas the name of F & N Durlacher has disappeared - well, will disappear.

BA:  How did jobbers compete with each other?  Did you for example know what the other jobber was making in a particular stock?

AA: We didn't bother about it, I don't think. We had an idea.  Because if I'm making 3-6 and he's making 6-9, he'll come across and say 'Look I'll give you six'. So you were never far out.  But we didn't chase around to see what he was making. We didn't get people to go round and find out what he was calling them over there, because we all ran our books as we wanted to run them.  A lot of the time the price on the board did not necessarily mean  you were making the price, anyway.  As I say, it depends. If you want to make 3-6 in 50, and the bloke wants to deal in 200,000, that's an entirely different price.  So the board price meant nothing at all.

BA:  What was the point of having a board?

AA:  Because it gives them some idea.  In the later years people used to put up the 3-6 price.  I used to just put up the middle price.  It didn't necessarily mean that I'm making it to certain people, if I want to make something else to tom, Dick or Harry, different from anybody else.  It depended upon the way you felt the market was and what you thought his order might be.  If you wanted to try and [...] him, which you're entitled to, and you can make the price, if he didn't like it he'd walk off the pitch.  And if he walks off the pitch you'd know darn well what he's going to do elsewhere.  So it was a good life, absolute fun.  It was a serious business actually, but there was a lot of play about. It was a fantastic place and I'm sorry to see it's gone now.  I could never sit down and watch that screen day in and day out.

BA:  How would you contrast the Stock Exchange as a place to work in when you retired in 84, to when you'd first gone there as a blue button, as a checking clerk?  You were in a different building.

AA:  In the new building yes.  But there was really no difference.  You had your place. You had your spot marked out, which was what you had in the old building when I first started.  I don't think there was really any change.  The only change was the building.  And it got computerised; waiters had disappeared.

BA:  Did the type of people going into the market change?  The type of people who were becoming jobbers?

AA:  No, I don't think so.  As I say most of them came from the right school, because it was always advertised for people leaving Oxford and Cambridge.  Am I allowed to say that?

BA:  Yes, of course.

AA:  No, I didn't mean it.  I meant, me talking about Oxford and Cambridge from where I came from.  But I think that most of them were well-educated. But that didn't necessarily mean you'd make a decent jobber.  I had two people work for me over the years.  One, I said to him, 'There's no way you'll ever make a jobber'.  But he was a friend of a friend.  And I said 'you're in the wrong trade'.  He always liked to sell cars.  So I said, 'well why don't you go there?'  And one of our partners who'd got him the job, got him another job, and he's now a director of a big car place up in the West End.  So that was one. And another, I won't mention his name. He's now one of our biggest gilt dealers.  I said to him, 'you'll go a long way'.  I sent him home one day because I got very annoyed with him, very annoyed with him because he wouldn't do what I wanted him to do. He went home, but he came in the next day and it was alright.  But now he's very big.

BA:  He had his own views about what he was going to do?

AA:  That's right.

BA:  Was this when you were running a pitch by this stage?

AA:  Oh I was running a pitch from before 1970, yes.  I'd run a pitch for quite a few years; from middle 1960s, I was running my own pitch.

BA:  What was your approach to running a pitch? For example, you mentioned sending the chap home who had different views.  Did you feel it was important for you to be in charge?

AA:  I thought it was important to be in charge. Because you're making the sort of size, what you think is correct, and the youngsters, if they've not been there long enough, it's not easy for them to do.  It's all a question of flair once again.  You can talk to people.  And this chap, in actual fact, eventually, he was so good at it, he had the flair, he had the personality, he had everything. But I still gave him the day off.  But after that we got along terrific, we really did.  Well we still do.  He'll always talk about it too.  He'll talk about that to everybody.  But it was one of those things. I may have been a bit upset on the day.  But still that's how I felt.  And he didn't take [offence], and he was very good.  And he turned out brilliant.

BA:  How did you approach running a pitch?  How many dealers would you have working under you?

AA:  You'd only have one with you, sometimes two, if we were over-staffed; on occasions you had two. But really there were more or less four of us, two there and two here, and we had 150, 175 stocks between us.  They had about half, and we had half.  What we used to do, we used to integrate, so that if one was away there, someone would stand in the middle.  But mostly we had two to run a book.  Which was enough, because if you have three you can never run a book with three.  So you had the man in charge and the lad with him.  And it worked very well.

BA:  How much capital did you feel you needed to run a book?

AA:  I don't really know. Very difficult question to answer because at times - difficult to say.  I should think it varies from 10 to 100 million. And it was always available.  Never any trouble about it. Because most of the time, although you might trade 100 million in a day, next day it might be down to 50 million. And by the end of the account, it was always try to get it down to a minimum possible, unless you thought the market was going to take off the following account.  Because it always becomes expensive to borrow money over a period of time.  So I really don't know.  I would say anything from 10 million to 100 million.

BA:  Let me ask you a few more personal questions again.  Where were you living during your jobbing career?  I assume when you started you were still living at home?

AA:  That's right.  And then I got married and I lived at Debden, just outside Loughton.  I lived there for ten years I suppose.  Then I moved to where I am now, Waltham Abbey, and I've been there for nearly 30 years.

BA:  Did you have any children?

AA:  Yes, I had two.

BA:  What would you have said to them if they'd asked whether they should go into the City?

AA:  Well, I told the boy, 'if you want to go into the City, you've got to be cleverer than me'.  I said, 'I don't think it would have been right for him to come into the City'.  Because being the son of Tommy Anderson.  And the name of Tommy Anderson was pretty well known. And I would hate him..., because he had something there to live up to, and I wasn't sure whether he could do it or not. So I thought it would be best....  I said, 'you do what you want to do. If you want to go I'll help you, but you can't expect too much help from me.  Because of the big reputation that I've got, it might be difficult for you to beat.' And I wouldn't want that hanging over him.  So he's done well.  He's working for Thorn EMI and he's been there ever since he left school.   And my daughter's married, so she doesn't have to work. So that's where my two children are.  The boy I was mainly concerned about actually.  But as I say, 'I think you'd be better off if you don't go into the City.'

BA:  How had you met your wife originally?  Was she someone who'd been working in the City?

AA:  No, just somebody who used to live locally whom I knew - used to lark about with when I was at school, in actual fact.  Well not when I was at school, but soon after I left school, and she was just an ordinary person, like myself.

BA:  What would you say the qualities were that you had that had made you a successful jobber?

AA:  Flair, and the gambling instinct.  I'm sure the gambling instinct. I'm not quite sure where it comes from, but I'm sure the flair for... and the interest.  As soon as I saw the job, as soon as I got there, I was working for going places. I don't know really.  The ambition to be somebody.  When I first started, I had an ambition.  I thought I'll become a dealer, and that's what I'll aim for.  And of course when I became a partner, that was beyond my expectations.  All the way through my life I never expected it, not for one minute, at any time, right up until I got the offer.  I put it as flair, interest, not afraid of working.  I used to get in at quarter to eight in the morning.  Never used to start until half past eight in the office, half past nine down the market.  Leave at half past five at night, sometimes; sometimes you were there till half past six.  Hard work and not afraid to miss a night out with the boys or anything like that.

BA:  Are there any other jobbers who stand out in your memory either as friends or as people who'd made an impression on you?  You mentioned in the early days Pat Durlacher. Were there any other jobbers who made an impression on you in that way?

AA:  I'm afraid I can't remember really, not to go back that far.

BA:  What about more recently.

AA:  I think Smith Brothers. They've always impressed me.   I won't pick out any individual, because I think that all of them were really first class jobbers and still are.  I've known them a few years, and they really are fantastic.  That would be the main firm I would pick on over the years.  Before Big Bang, they were never afraid to have a go.  They were bigger gamblers than me possibly, but no individual I would pick out.  I think the firm as a whole is absolutely first class.  All of them.

Tape 2 side 2

BA: [If someone said to you it was necessary to change the jobbing system], what would you have said to them?

AA:  I would have said, we'd been there for ever.  I cannot see any reason for it to change at the time, apart from progress.  I would have thought it would have been still on the floor of the Stock Exchange for years and years and years to come.  Because that's where the people met the people who are in the business.  And now you're not meeting people at all.  I would have said it would have gone on for years as it was, because I thought it was a pretty good system.  It had to improve with computers, obviously, and things like that, but the system itself, like making the prices, shouldn't change.  But now, of course, it's changed out of all proportion because you've got one man making the price and the other six, eight or ten competitors reading him.

BA:  Why do you think it was a good system?

AA:  Well I think it was a good system for the simple fact that everybody could do their business without any trouble, without anybody knowing about it, although in later years, [there] was always insider dealing at times, obviously, because you couldn't stop it.  But basically, if a man got an order in a million shares, it was done.  It was getting done, it may not all have been done in one day or two days, but it was done in three or four days, or five days. But now, the system to my mind seems to be absolutely wrong.  You've dealt in 100,000, the price on the board changes and everybody sees it and you're ruined.  And that's the difference.  I don't believe that the market would have been so volatile if we still had the Floor of the market going and you didn't have to tell the rest of the world what you'd been doing all day.

BA:  How do you feel about your career in the City?  Would you at any time have considered doing something else?

AA:   No never, I thoroughly enjoyed - I've been there forty years - thoroughly enjoyed every day of my life. I used to get up - I used to detest Saturdays and Sundays, because I couldn't go there.  And it was absolutely first class.  You met some wonderful people. It was really a life out of this world, that I never ever thought I'd ever see part of.  I never knew it existed.  Put it that way.  Absolutely tremendous life.

BA:  I think we can end on that note.  Thank you very much.