The Jobbing System of the London Stock Exchange: An Oral History
Ref. No.: 38	Playback No.:

Interviewee's surname: Rylands	Title: Mr 
Interviewee's forenames: Peter
Date of birth:   13 March 1939	SEX:  Male

Date(s) of recording: 28 August 1990
Location of interview:  Cazenove, Tokenhouse Yard, EC2
Name of interviewer:  Bernard Attard
Type of recorder:  Marantz CP 430
Total no. of tapes:      2   Speed:
Type of tape:   TDX AR 60     Noise reduction:   DBX
Mono or stereo:  stereo      Original or copy:  Copy
Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: No clearance received

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

Tape 1, Side 1

Birth in Kent in 1939; father a dentist; education; always wanted to be a dealer on the Stock Exchange; joins Hoare & Co through a personal contact in 1963; opportunity of becoming a blue button in Cazenove in 1968; becomes a dealer during the Australian boom; older dealers find the Australian market too rough; becomes a partner around 1978; old-fashioned dealers would not speak to clients, eg. the dealers of the merchant banks; importance of personal contact; early recollections of the Stock Exchange, eg. Percy Duke; duties as a blue button; the firms which Charles Purnell dealt with; attitude to Peter Rylands as a Cazenove employee; Peter Ryland's jobber blue button contemporaries; importance of sport as a common denominator; Cazenove only dealt with large jobbers; training as a dealer; influence of Charles Purnell; Purnell's dealing style; dealing during the Australian boom; as a Cazenove dealer, always able to get attention of the jobbers; case of a client who gave the wrong order; the skill required to be a dealer; difference between a broker and a jobber; risk factor in being a jobber; jobbers who Peter Rylands remembers; who you dealt with depended on personal relations; monitoring of dealers; Peter Ryland's dealing style; the way a jobber might find out what a broker was doing; advantage of secrecy in the old market; Peter Ryland's method of dealing with the jobbers; rows with Geoff Lederman; Peter Rylands cautious of dealing with people who Purnell dealt with; case of Purnell reprimanding Peter Rylands in front of Wedd dealers because he was accused of dealing wrongly; difficulty of dealing with Jack Durlacher; change over of dealing staff at time of Purnell's retirement; generational change in the Stock Exchange; changes in size of bargain; differences between the way you treated a private client and an institutional client; mixed socially with jobbers.

Tape 1, side 2

Management of placings and the role of jobbers; complaints of jobbers who felt badly treated; matching and put throughs; underwriting; increase in risk factor for a jobber; decline in number of jobbers; growth of Smith and Pulley; decline of Wedd; attempts to establish a brokers' committee; Scrimgeour prime mover behind brokers' committee; attitude to jobbers' committee; price agreements; method of challenging a jobber's price; being in a physical market place means you can see what is going on; jobbers as a source of information on companies and order flow; value of shop brokers in providing liquidity; problems with certain jobbers over placings; jobbing firms which Peter Rylands frequently dealt with; organisation of Cazenove's dealing department; supervision of dealers; contacts between jobbers and clients; eg. of Gerald Lederman knowing about the sale of a large stake in a company in the stores sector; relationship between manager of the BP Pension fund (Butterfield) and Jack Durlacher; attitude of Cazenove; Ariel; Robert Fleming starts market making; attitude to clients wanting to know which jobber Cazenove had dealt with; impact of American merchant banks; split orders; only a few jobbing firms could ever handle large orders; only ever room for a limited number of jobbers; attitude to brokers jobbing stocks; change from old House to the new.

Tape 2, side 1

Public flotations; story of Tony Lewis wrecking arrangements with jobbers on first day of dealing in Cable & Wireless; lessons learnt from this; scale of privatisations compared with flotations of other companies; memories of first day dealing in privatisation stocks; preference still given to shop brokers; dawn raids; contested bids; behaviour of jobbers during a dawn raid; requiring that jobbers deal for cash; Gallaher takeover; regret at abolition of single capacity; clients get too big for the single capacity system; qualities of a successful jobber; jobbers who stand out in memory; successful jobbers prepared to take risks; you always dealt with a jobber on his terms; the risk factor in being a jobber.