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

Interview No. 2: Geoffrey Lederman

Interviewer: Bernard Attard

Institute of Historical Research: 13 December 1989

Tape 1, side 1

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

GL: I was born in London in [9 July] 1929.

BA: Yes, and what did your parents do?

GL: My father was a half-commission man on the Stock Exchange for a period of years up until the War, and then we were evacuated and he set up a small jewellery business in Birmingham.

BA: Can you explain what a half-commission man was?

GL: Yes. It was, in those days, where individuals had their own clients and they weren't principals of the firm or partners as they were; they received literally half the commission that was taken. And that was a system that was operative for quite a long time.

BA: And he was working for a broking [firm]?

GL: Yes, a small broking firm.

BA: Was there any particular reason why he decided to leave?

GL: He had mixed fortunes, I think.  He was quite a gambler and he did very well two or three times and then things didn't go quite as well. And then, because of the evacuation, he decided that he ought to do something a little more constructive and positive.

BA: Where did he send you to school?

GL: We went to a boarding school in Wales called Whittingehame College, and I had a very enjoyable time there. But unfortunately he died at a fairly early age.  He died at the age of 51 while I was still at school and my mother was left on her own with three fairly unpleasant youngsters to bring up, I would think.

BA: So what did you do when you finished school?

GL: I went to a technical college, in Birmingham.  Took a sort of secretarial course to which I was pretty hopeless. And I think it was my intention at the time to, well, try and spend as much time as I could in the sporting field, and used to get up to the County Cricket Ground as often as I possibly could.

BA: And did you start that course with the view to any particular career?

GL: No. I think it was basically to keep myself out of trouble until I went to do National Service, which was looming ahead.

BA: And that's what you went on to next?

GL: That's right.  I went into the army in 1947 and the period of enlistment then was for 18 months but, due to some of the problems in Palestine and elsewhere, it was extended and I did virtually two years.

BA: And at the end of that two years, what happened?

GL: I came out and I had a little leave due to me and I think in those days I thought the world owed me a little bit of a living, and I didn't do too much for a couple of months.  And then I think I began to get a little bit ashamed of myself because my mother was working, and I eventually signed on at the local Labour Exchange in the City - in Moorgate - and got a job with an Australian import/export firm, which lasted for about eighteen months.  It was extraordinarily boring and very underpaid and I eventually confided in my mother that I had had enough of this and by chance she said, 'Well, I happen to know of somebody, to whom you are very vaguely related, who might just possibly want young men in their office'. And so it transpired.

BA: And who did you transfer to? You moved...

GL: She spoke to a Mr Charlie Smith who was one of the original Smith Brothers.  And after an interview they took me on for an office job.

BA: And so this was the jobbing firm Smith Brothers?

GL: This was the jobbing firm Smith Brothers.

BA: And when was this?

GL: This was in 1951.

BA: Now, could you tell me something about the firm at that time, when you joined?

GL: Yes. It was a very small firm. I think they had six partners, four of whom had come back from the war.  And Charlie Smith, as I said, one of the founders, was on the fringe of retiring or taking it easily.  And the four partners who came back from the war wanted to move on a little bit.  It was basically a Jewish orientated firm, although not entirely so, and they dealt in the, in some of the industrial equity stocks and the gold mining stocks - the South African gold mining stocks - which was one of their strengths.  

BA: How long had the firm been in existence, roughly?

GL: It started in 1923, so approximately 28 years when I joined.

BA: And what was the first job that you had in the firm?

GL: Clerking in the office.

BA: And what did that involve?

GL: Ticking off ledgers, entering up bargains, then you progressed to the exalted status of checking clerk, which meant you went downstairs into a room underneath the Stock Exchange and checked bargains with the various brokers that  you dealt with during the day, and hopefully matched everything up.

BA: Can you tell me something about the actual size of the office when you started. About how many people were employed?

GL: I think there were about a dozen.  The office itself was pretty scrappy, in Warnford Court, 3rd floor of Warnford Court.  And I think I was the youngest there by a very considerable number of years.  And the turnover was fairly high because, as they took on a youngster, somebody usually left for a variety of reasons and they weren't notoriously good payers.  And so it went on from there.

BA: Do you remember, roughly, what your first wage was?

GL: I think it was just over #5 a week. I think I got #5. 2s. 6d. at the original company I was at - Gollin & Co., this Australian [firm], and I think I improved a tiny bit on that.  So somewhere around about the #5. 10s., as it was then, #6 mark.

BA: And how was the actual office organized physically?  Did all the staff occupy one room and the partners had separate rooms?

GL: There was a partners' room.  The partners were all trading in those days.  There was no such thing as analytical partners, or certainly not from our point of view there wasn't.  All the partners used to go down to the Stock Exchange at 9.30 and come up to their own room at half past three and take out their profit and loss, and the rest of the office was dispersed amongst four or five rooms.

BA: Can you remember anything about the partners at this time, as individuals?

GL: Yes. The senior partner was a very, very kind man - Mr Rantzen - who actually employed me and went onto become an honorary market official later in his career.  He spoke at a tremendous rate of knots and I found it very difficult to understand exactly what he was saying and he used to give instructions in this rapid-fire voice and expect you to understand, immediately, what he was saying. And until I caught up with the lingo of the Stock Exchange, I did have trouble with this.  And the second senior partner was a man by the name of Sidney King who had a sort of slightly notorious reputation in the Stock Exchange. But I was eventually apprenticed to him to stand with him as my first trading job. And he taught me a hell of a lot of what I did come to know.  And the other two partners - Sidney Davis and Henry Marks - were experts on the South African goldmining market. And they, perhaps I shouldn't be so irreverent, became to be known, because of their short stature, as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  And those four basically drove the firm along from the early 1950s.

BA: Had they always been with the firm?

GL: Yes. Yes, they'd all started with Smith Brothers from a very early age.

BA: Was there any particular reason why the firm actually was working in the South African market?

GL: Not to the best of my knowledge.  They had always traded in South African shares.  I presume because they thought it was a profitable place to have a go at. We didn't have any particular South African connections.

BA: Well, let's return to you again. You started as a clerk in the office.  You moved on to being a checking clerk.  What was the next stage?

GL: The next stage was to become a blue buttton.

BA: Can you explain what a blue button was?

GL: A blue button was, in effect, a runner in the Stock Exchange.  And the idea was for him to try and learn what was going on and eventually, if he had any talent, to run a book.  You were then a general dog's body at the beck and call of all the partners. You ran limits, what we call limits, bidding and offering the brokers when they'd indicated that they wanted certain prices for certain stocks, and generally trying to learn at the shoulder of the partner what was going on.

BA: Do you have any particular memories of that time?

GL: Well, yes, there's one rather amusing incident, I think when I was in the gold market, and there was a shout from Mr Marks.  He called my name across and my job was to keep the boards up to date, the price boards up to date. And there was this shout for me and in the meantime he'd looked somewhere else and he called again 'Lederman' and I said, 'Yes', and turned round and hit him smack in the eye with my elbow, which wasn't the best way to get on. But he took it in good heart and I survived that one. And there was one other occasion when I was sort of called into the office and the other goldmining partner, Sidney Davis, was leaning   back in his chair and close to the door and I knocked on the door and went in rather quickly and sort of smacked the door into the back of his head.  However, I survived that one as well.  

BA: About how long were you a blue button?

GL: I was a blue button for about two and a half years.  There was a minimum period of two years, I think it was and...

BA: Who was that specified by?

GL: The Stock Exchange Council.

BA: I see. And then?

GL: Then I was authorised, which meant you were entitled to deal but you were not a member, due to the dismissal of one of the chaps in our firm.  He had the temerity to turn up one day for work in an Edwardian type suit - and in those days that sort of thing didn't go down terribly well.  Anyway, he was asked to leave, and I became an authorised clerk.  And became a member in 1954.

BA: Was this before for you actually became a partner in the firm?

GL: Yes.

BA: Yes.  And what were you doing as an authorised clerk?

GL: Holding a very small book which contained a relatively few stocks of insignificant nature, really - not the leader stocks - and basically when your partner went out to lunch or whatever, you took over the lead book and hoped to keep out of trouble.

BA: How did you find this when you started? Was it a bit nerve-racking, or were you...

GL: It was a little bit nerve-racking, but somehow or other I don't think I felt too nervous about changing the prices if I thought it was right.  And I had a very good teacher in the aforesaid Sidney King, who was a ruthless type of jobber. He had no compunction in calling prices up or down to try and sort his book out if he thought it was necessary.

BA: And you had simply learned through experience, by being  with this man?

GL: Yes.

BA: What could you say about the Stock Exchange, generally, at this period?  

GL: Well...

BA: For example, you referred to one of your colleagues being sacked because he hadn't maintained the correct dress.

GL: Yes.  Well, it was very formal, or much more formal, when I went down to the House for the first time as a blue button.  You wore a stiff collar and a tie of sombre hue.  And if you sort of transgressed these things it was somewhat frowned upon.  And it took a long, long time to become more modern, more up to date; and the partners of those days were, well, like little gods and everybody was 'Yes, Sir', and 'No, Sir' and if you didn't conform, you left.  Labour was fairly plentiful and so it was a question of being polite and courteous and I agreed with it, honestly.

BA: How did you feel about the Stock Exchange, generally?  Did it feel like an institution that had not changed for a long time?

GL: Yes. The traditions soon got to you - the things that you could do and shouldn't do, and there were one or two rituals which were carried on.

BA: Could you refer any of those, for example?  

GL: For example, round about ten past three, quarter past three on a Friday afternoon, several members of the old gilt market used to sing, and I'm not quite sure why, 'Jerusalem'.  I think it was something to do with one of the characters in the gilt-edged market - which was at the far end of the Stock Exchange from where I was - but this was one of those little things that happened without fail on a Friday afternoon. 

BA: Could you describe, physically, what the floor of the Stock Exchange was like?

GL: Yes.  I can't quite give you the exact area of it but there were several pillars which were - we called [them] stands - numbered stands where the old waiters, mostly ex-army people, called out the names of members who were needed for business or messages to pass on and I think there were fourteen of those plus a number of little sort of tubs, we used to call them, where you could sort of sit down and sit around, although blue buttons, of course, weren't allowed to sit down.  

BA: That was one of the other conventions?

GL: Oh, well, it was a rule.  Blue buttons did not sit down unless the partner had said, 'Work this out for me and sit on the seat', or whatever it maybe. But you definitely did not sit down.

BA: And then you had the different markets located in different points.

GL: Yes. Although they weren't totally defined they gravitated to various areas, one or two of them did extend a little bit beyond the main conclave, if you like, but you soon found out who was attached to each market.  And there were some, I think a lot, of conventions in the South African gold market.  I mean, one of the silly things they used to do was: the South African gold market was covered by a big dome at one end of the Stock Exchange and there used to be a regular competition to shoot paper darts up to the dome and sort of see if you could lodge them; and all these rather silly little things that did go on in those days, but it was great fun.

BA: Could you describe a typical day for you at this stage, as an authorised clerk?  About what time would you come into work? Would you go straight to the office, and so on?

GL: As an authorised clerk I used to go into the Stock Exchange at half past nine when dealing started.  In those days they didn't open the doors to the jobbers, specifically, as was introduced later to allow them to get to their pitches and organise themselves, but there was a general rush to whatever your pitch was.  And that went on with an interval for lunch and until half past three when the Stock Exchange closed, and then one returned to the office.

BA: And did you normally take a break for lunch?

GL: Yes. I remember again, perhaps a little interesting story, that I got to know quite a few young people and a few sporting lads, I suppose one might call them.  And we used to go down to the old ABC Coffee Bar, which was in Warnford Court, and I think we used to order about two rounds of toast between eight of us and we all used to sit down there playing mini-poker. And I extended my lunch hour by about twenty minutes one day and got the most almighty bollocking when I got back for having been far too involved.  I don't think the partners knew quite what I was doing but I was decidedly late and made well aware of it.

BA: Were you generally quite busy when you were dealing on the floor?

GL: Yes.  There were a considerable number of smaller bargains and the private investor, I think, was sixty or seventy per cent of the market in those days, so there were quite a large number of small bargains - small investors - and we used to do several pages of business in stocks like Woolworths, Marks and Spencers, and old Lewis's Investment Trusts.  That was where I first started dealing in the Stores market.

BA: How did you actually know who were the principals in these transactions?

GL: Well, again, that was one of the conventions in the Stock Exchange that you never asked anybody which firm he was with, and it was definitely not done to enquire of anybody.  And, if necessary, if a partner of a broking firm came up to you and asked you a price and bought or sold a number of shares and you didn't know who he was, you just said, 'Thank you, sir', and 'sell' your thousand at 2s. 9d. And you then followed the gentleman to, hopefully to the stand, and asked one of the waiters, who were the fount of all knowledge in those days, and they would tell you that Mr so and so was with whoever it may have been.

BA: Were there any particular characteristics of the markets you were dealing in during this early post-war period?  I mean were they booming, were they generally quite healthy?

GL: Well, again, I was lucky, I think because Sidney King was our partner in the Stores Market, and we managed to partake of the early 1950s and onwards Stores boom. So there was quite a lot of business going on. And in those days the names were very popular: Debenhams, Lewis Investment Trusts (did I say Woolworths?) Marks and Spencers, Gussey were just on the fizz, Wolfson was really sort of beginning to motor in those days; Great Universal Stores, Sears, Drage's and those sort of stocks. And they were very, very popular and the press tips were quite frequent and as the shares were relatively low priced they had a big following. A lot of bargains were done, particularly on a Monday after the Sunday financial papers had a go at tipping certain shares.  

BA: Which particular market were you dealing in?

GL: I was dealing in the Stores Market.

BA: How were the other markets that the firm was dealing in doing?

GL: The South African gold market went very, very quiet and in those days, my very early days, I used to get a profit share on the book on which I was working. And as the gold market went very, very quiet, this led to a change in the remuneration of the firm because my great friend, Tony Lewis, who became chairman, who'd been at the firm longer than I had been, suddenly found himself not earning any money because he was working in the gold market and I, having arrived considerably later, was earning more than he was.  And this was obviously not fair.

BA: What was his position at this time?

GL: He was a member, a member-dealer at the time.  I first met Tony in 1951.  We've been friends ever since.  He went on to become chairman of the company.

BA: How was this particular problem resolved, with you making a resonably good living and...?

GL: Well, we became sharers. There was a bonus pool that was distributed on the profits of the whole firm.

BA: Let's think about, again, the firm at the time, in general terms, and compare it with other jobbing firms on the Floor.  Was there anything distinctive about the Smiths?

GL: I don't think so.  

BA: How did it compare in terms of size.

GL: Oh, tiny, tiny.  I would think we were sort of the, perhaps not quite the minnows, but there were some great names about, there were some tremendous firms in those days.  Yes, in the gold market there were the Lazarus Brothers, Lemon Brothers; in the gilt-edged market there was Wedd, Francis and Praed; in the industrial market there was Ricardo, Isaacs and Bray, Blackwell, Haddow and Turner, Percy Duke, Durlacher - did I say F and N Durlacher - and several others.

BA: And did your partners have any plans to try and expand the firm?

GL: I don't think we ever wrote out a game plan, as one tends to do these days and an objective, but no, I think they had sort of informal discussions and we managed to improve.  We were dealing in a considerable number of the UK industrial stocks, Wilfrid Ransom and another partner, Archie Jessep, used to do those and Sidney King in the Stores.  And two or three years after I'd been dealing, Sidney King said to me: 'Would you like to deal in steel shares and still stand on the stores pitch but deal in steel shares?'  And I accepted. Stocks and shares to me are basically just counters, I mean they are either buyers or sellers.  I don't, as a trader, think its particularly necessary to have a detailed knowledge of every company you deal in.  Certain personalities do require that, other personalities tend to go by the seat of their pants considerably more.  And the steel market had an advantage  in that it was very, very well spread out in the Stock Exchange. There was no particularly focal point.  It went almost from one end of the Stock Exchange to the other.  I think at the time there were fourteen jobbers there, competing jobbers.

BA: How did you go about, then, deciding on how to mark a share?

GL: How to what?

BA: What price to...

GL: Well you just took up the shares and say that you were dealing from, whatever it may be, the first of January, and you found out what the price of shares roughly closed on the previous date. You opened up on your feel of the market for that particular day, and so you went on.  I mean obviously you did a bit of pre-advertising and fore-warning of people that you were going to deal in the stocks as from then and you circularised all the brokers and also your opposition.  

BA: Returning to, again, jobbing in general terms, there were still many firms trading as jobbers?

GL: Very many, yes.

BA: Was there a shake up taking place at this time?

GL: I suppose slowly yes, but not disastrously so.  Some of the big names did go. Kitchen Baker Mason was one that folded.  Paul E. Shaw, I think Frisby Brothers, which were [a] very, very well respected little firm. And a tiny anecdote there which might amuse: that the two Frisby brothers had seen very considerable war service and the elder one, I believe, won the VC and the younger one won the MC and he was known forever after as 'the coward' because he hadn't quite equalled the heights of his brother.

BA: Were there any particular reasons why these firms ceased to trade?

GL: Mainly because the senior partners wanted to retire and didn't have the obligation that one has to go on and they wanted to take their money out when they thought fit.  And I think, as I indicated earlier, it was the small nucleus of the senior partners who ran the outfits with rods of iron without very much obligation to anybody else.

BA: Did you have any new firms coming into existence at this time? 

GL: There must have been one or two, but not any that I can think of off hand that made a great impact on the Stock Exchange.

BA: Did you have much personal contact with other jobbing firms during the course of your working day?

GL: Yes, one was in touch with them because quite often you went up and bid or offered stock.

BA: Could you explain a little bit about that?

GL: Well, it might be that, for example, you had bought some, let's say, Woolworths at 32s. and maybe within quarter of an hour's time you'd heard they were 32s. 3d. bid with one of your opposition.  Well, if you could go and sell those Woolworths at 32s. 3d. it was a nice profit in a short space of time.   There was the possibliity, of course, that brokers would come up and buy the shares, but you could probably deal in a larger size with your opposition than you could with a stray broker who might be a buyer.

BA: Were the actual mechanics of dealing with another jobber the same as they would have been if a broker had come up to deal?

GL: Yes.  Again, you had to go up and express yourself extremely carefully with other jobbers.  You could not just go up to a jobber and say, 'I am a seller of Woolworths at 32s. 3d.'. He was entitled to then turn round and say to you, 'Well I will buy five million shares'.  You were making him an open offer and you had to phrase things extremely carefully; and some of these senior jobbers were very, very tough on this with the youngsters.  If you put a word out of place they stuck you to those bargains and could be quite expensive, and you obviously weren't too popular with your own senior partner when you got back and reported that you had sold far more than he'd intended you to in the first place.

BA: So once you had actually made an offer, but without specifying a size, you were bound to take the size suggested by the other jobber?

GL: Yes, you had to specify it.  And the same applied to the open bidding which went on in several markets in those days.  There used to be a lot of bidding and offering.

BA: Can you name some of those markets?

GL: Particularly in the oil market; again, the South African gold market, but you had to say, 'Six and 5/8ths bid ten thousand Free State Geduld'.  If you went in and bid 6 and 5/8ths openly, literally anybody who wanted to sell at 6 and 5/8ths was entitled to say, 'They're yours', and you had to honour those bargains.  So it was a good discipline.

BA: And how did this actually happen?  Were you all gathered around the jobbers' pitches?

GL: Well, you just went into the open market and shouted out.

BA: Was this quite disruptive?  

Tape 1, side 2

BA: Was it an open outcry [system]?

GL: That's right, yes.

BA: Was it disruptive?

GL: It didn't happen in the overall spread of the UK equity market because there were so many stocks - several thousand, I think - but in the tighter areas, the gold market, the oil market, there was quite a lot of open bidding. Independent jobbers very often used to gamble by going in and bidding aggressively for stock, or offering it aggressively, that they had got their books the right way and they would either attract buyers or shake out sellers and create turnover.  

BA: Now, you say independent jobber.  Was he a distinctive type?

GL: I'm sorry.  I meant independent operators within the jobbing firms.

BA: What was an independent jobber?

GL: Well, I mean, sort of a partner dealing in the gold share market, or whatever.

BA: Was the atmosphere quite competitive?  Was there a lot of competition between jobbers?

GL: Yes, yes.  Very considerable amount.

BA: How did this show itself?

GL: Well the prices were very close and very tight, in those days.  And there was a tremendous flow of business.  There were a lot of members all belonging to individual firms, different individual firms.  There were a far greater number of different individual firms than there have been in the past few years and, therefore, one was competing on a wide spectrum for a considerable amount of business.

BA: Outside the House, were you all quite amicable?

GL: Yes, very friendly.  We formed various societies, a lot of sporting societies.  There were some great sporting names in the Stock Exchange, in those days. And I think one of the attractions of the House was that you could, I think, find somebody who was interested in something in almost any degree.  If you wanted Wimbledon tickets or you wanted to join the male voice choir or you wanted to know about stamps or flowers, somebody in the Stock Exchange was a bit of an  expert on almost every particular field.  And it was great to be able to go up and chat to these people and societies and friendships did form. And I was very lucky to be involved in one, as a founder member of the Stock Exchange Football Veterans' Association, which kicked off in 1958, I think it was. And that was for chaps who'd thought they'd played perhaps their best football but wanted to continue playing on slightly a more social basis.

BA: Who did you actually compete against?

GL: Various old boys' clubs and a couple of wandering clubs, couple of Universities and things like that.  As long as we weren't in a league and you could have a jar or two afterwards and enjoy things. It didn't necessitate training to the nth degree every Tuesday and Thursday night, so you weren't at sort of peak fitness and it didn't really matter if you weren't.

BA: Now, you've said something about your relations with other jobbers in the House, can you say something about relations with brokers?  Did you feel brokers had a particular attitude to jobbers generally?

GL: Well, They thought all jobbers were rogues, naturally. But as a small firm we had to work very hard at building our clientele and, there's no doubt, that in my early days we didn't see the cream of the business of perhaps the very blue-blooded firms. We had to fight our way up very much on merit and our prices had to be more competitive, larger in size. There were some very, very long-standing attachments quite understandably and, particularly the great firms rather like Cazenove, Hoare & Co., Rowe Pitman, Greenwell, gravitated to their old friends and the only way we could actually get into the act was to be very competitive.  But it took some doing and I think we got there in the end.

BA: Did brokers ever try to use you as a source of information on particular shares?  If they thought the shares were going to move?

GL: Yes.  That was the general chatter of the House.  You know, what do you think of Woolworths this, or do you think there's any mileage in Shell. Yes, they sounded out your opinions but basically, jobbers being very short term animals, I wouldn't have considered their view as expert, certainly for the public.  If a jobber can take a turn in a couple of minutes that's his function and he didn't have the obligation the brokers do to the clients.  Basically he is a principal. He is - which is what I liked about it - he is a totally free agent to call the prices exactly what he liked, providing, of course, he justified them in reasonable size to the brokers.

BA: Which brings me to another question.  At this time did you feel you had made the right decision in joining a jobbing firm?  Were you happy as a jobber?

GL: Yes, I think I was very happy.  When I first came into it I, I hadn't the vaguest clue as to what it was about; even though my father had been a half-commission man, I didn't know really what the Stock Exchange was.  I'm not sure I had any great ambitions, to be truthful with you.  But it seemed to go along quite well, and I got the odd rise or two and yes, I was very happy playing a lot of sport and having a nice life with a very good crowd.  Work was very hard and if there was a lot of business about you were expected to stay behind working till ten, half past ten, at night sorting everything out. I nearly got the bullet for refusing to work on a Saturday morning when the senior partner told me I would be in, or else. Fortunately, or unfortunately, business dropped off a little bit and there wasn't quite the necessity to come in the following Saturday morning, so I escaped ever having to do a Saturday morning.

BA: Did you feel you had a secure living?

GL: Yes, I think so. I suppose in those days one didn't worry quite as much being whatever it was, middle twenties.  The world was a happy place and I seemed to be progressing. They seemed relatively pleased with me and I survived enjoyably.  

BA: Well, we can now come to the point at which you became a partner in the firm. How did this actually come about?

GL: Well, I was very lucky I think because, as I said previously, Sidney King suggested we took up steel shares.  I think there were fourteen steel companies, at the time. And in 1959 there was the Macmillan election of 'You've never had it so good'.  And when the Conservatives were elected, I think it was 8 October, there was an almighty steel boom the following day.  Now, we went into that election with an almost flat book, which means with no positions on either side to any great degree.  And fortunately, I did a very considerable amount of trade the following day and for the next few weeks.  But when we came to take out the P and L of the first day's trading mine was very, very considerably in excess of anything the partners thought I could make.  

BA: Can you explain incidently [what is] 'P and L'?

GL: The profit and loss, which used to be taken out manually, in those days, or certainly in our firm it was taken out manually.  And the result I think was extremely gratifying and surprising to the partners.  By that time, incidently, Sidney King had left us.  He had resigned in May 1959.  And, due to the fact that the firm had also had a little bit of a goodish run either side of the election, the partners put into operation a cessation plan which, in effect, was a means of saving tax.  And these cessations were pretty frequent in those days. But what it did mean was that you had to change the partnership of the firm: in other words the old partnership closed - hence cessation - and a new partnership was created.  You could retain the same name. And to facilitate that in 1960, after they had seen the results of 1959-60, they brought me in as a partner.

BA: Had the number of partners increased since you'd started?

GL: We had taken on one, yes.  A man by the name of George Simmonds, who unfortunately died in the mid-1960s.

BA: And what did becoming a partner involve for you, for example, in terms of your actual work?

GL: Nothing terribly much different.  I was a very, very junior partner.  In fact, although one had the obligations of a partnership, one had virtually no say in the running of the firm but the status was quite considerable. And going back to those days, even the fact that you were a member of the Stock Exchange was a definite status.  If you went into a shop or a restaurant or anything and you hadn't got money and you wanted to sign a cheque or anything, the fact that you were basically a member of the Stock Exchange was pretty good news in those days and 'my word is my bond' - the old Stock Exchange motto - was accepted in a variety of institutions.  Unfortunately, I think the status has declined somewhat now but it was quite a potent factor in those days.  And partnership... yes, you were called into chat, and you didn't have to be quite so... perhaps 'servile' is a bit strong; but you still called the senior partners 'Mr' or 'Sir'.  But... it was a sign of progress, obviously.

BA: Was it still essentially the same firm that you had joined?

GL: Pretty much, apart from Sidney King, yes, who had, in 1956, asked my brother and I (my brother Gerald) to go with him, or to consider going with him.  He wanted to start up his own firm and we actually didn't know quite how to go about this because he spoke to us in confidence and said: 'I intend to break away'.  And he put some terms to us which seemed fairly exotic and he said, 'Well, I'll come back to you'.  Well, we never heard another word. I think I was somewhat frightened to approach him and say 'What's going on?' and didn't, and the thing died.  Three years later he said, 'I don't know what happened to you the last time, when I approached you about leaving, but I am going to go in May 1959', the end of the firm's financial year.  And he said, 'I'm putting these terms to you and your brother and I'd very much like you to come with us'.  Again, we were quite embarassed but one of the other partners, Henry Marks, who became a good friend of mine, somehow got wind of something that was going on and obviously twigged that Sidney King was going to go and might want me to go with him, because I was his number two and was supporting him at the stores and steel market. Henry Marks got hold of Gerald and myself one Sunday morning and asked us to go round and meet the other partners and outlined the way he thought the firm would go and what our prospects were. He said at the time, 'We can't make you partners at this particular moment', I think probably because they wanted to split the cessation up amongst themselves or get that out of the way, which was fair enough.  But he said, 'If you carry on and stick with the firm this is the way ahead'.  And we declined Sidney King and stuck with Smith Brothers. They were as good as their word, and we became partners in 1960, I think it was.

BA: Was the firm still more or less the same size as when you joined, in terms of the number of staff?

GL: It was growing very, very slowly.  There were one or two who came along, good friends of mine, who, recently retired, as directors, Derek Field and Bernard Brown. They took up jobbing sectors or [acted as] assistants to the partners in jobbing sectors.  The firm was growing and becoming a little bit of a force.  We had attracted a better class of business in the South African gold share market, particularly from some connections with the old South African gold mining houses which were tremendously powerful and very operative in those days, and slowly, slowly we were getting into the better class of business in the equity market.

BA: When you say 'better class', how would you distinguish better class business from other sorts.

GL: Well, we were attracting the top [broking] firms to us.  I think they found they had to come to us to a certain degree because we were competing very, very strongly and we turned over stock very, very quickly.  We had to because the firm wasn't flush with a great deal of capital so we had to turn over our stock very, very quickly and, therefore, we were able to make bids and offers on a very, very fast basis. We tried to increase the size of those bids and offers and eventually drew the likes of Cazenove, Hoare & Co., Panmure Gordon, to come and at least ask us prices and occasionally deal with us.

BA: Was this a conscious policy that the firm had decided to pursue?

GL: I think it's a natural policy in anybody that you can't stand still otherwise you go down hill, and the partnership at that time was relatively young.  I mean, coming back from the war I suppose the senior partners of then were in their early forties and so they weren't old men when this began to get motoring. And again, not having any inherited wealth, any of them, they had the necessity to make some money and to attack the situation a little bit and they allowed the younger element - and encouraged the younger element - to have a freer hand. And, I think fortunately, a lot of the younger element had a big interest in sport, which is a big common denominator. Basically the four senior partners had no interest in sport, apart from Archie Jessep, and I think they realised this was a handicap.  So they let the younger brigade get on a little bit and make some more contacts, and things progressed a little bit from there.  

BA: Was this something that most jobbing firms were trying to do at the time?

GL: Well, as I said before, some of them I think were a little bit selfishly motivated.  It was the senior partners and nothing else.  And there was quite a bit of inherited wealth in some of these firms, so they hadn't the urgency or the drive to get on and get out into the big wide world, whereas we basically had to.

BA: Now the capital you were using, was it primarily your own capital?

GL: Yes. With bank loans, there were bank loans, obviously, but it was peanuts in relation to some of the capital used.

BA: And were the banks providing you with any long-term finance?

GL: Well, the banks were always there. We had a tremendous relationship, mainly with Barclays, ever since the company started I think, and that relationship continues up to the present day.  Plus a considerable variety of others now because of the internationalisation of the business.  But they were extremely good to us.  And there were one or two dodgy moments, which I wasn't too aware of, being a very junior partner, but I know from hearsay that things were a bit rocky on one or two occasions.  They had the most peculiar system in those days, whereby, although you hadn't actually dealt with a broker, you could get caught on what they call the trace: so if somebody the other side of the broker let the broker down, and a broker had passed on his stock to another broker who had dealt with you, you got caught up in the back-lash of everything; which was very unfair in its way, but I know a couple of times the firm was in a spot of bother.  

BA: Did this endanger the firm in any radical way?

GL: We were [not], I don't think, ever in danger of being closed down but it did create, obviously, a very considerable amount of tension and the banks were fair but pretty tough.  I know the senior partners went round once or twice and had to explain the situation extremely carefully and thoroughly and the banks did stand by.

BA: Were most jobbing firms making ends meet or did you have any hammerings?

GL: There was one small hammering of a jobbing firm, I think H.S. Whitcher & Son, if I remember.  I don't think I can remember hammerings of other jobbing firms.  There were a few brokers hammered and it was a ghastly feeling when that hammer used to go in the middle of everything.  Banged three times, the gavell banged three times and brought a most peculiar feeling to the pit of your stomach and you knew trouble obviously was about.  And you weren't always quite sure of the knock-on effects.  As soon as somebody was hammered there was a dash to ring up the office and say, you know, 'What have we got open with...', whoever it was.  It was a very, very unpleasant feeling.

BA: What was happening to the administrative side of the business at this time?  For example, were you beginning to use new technology, were you using computers?

GL: Very, very slowly in our case.  I think we didn't truly make proper progress for a considerable number of years.  I think there was a slightly inherent reluctance to spend money on machinery when individuals could do it and, of course, trading was so simple in those days.  Basically what you really needed was a jobbing book and a pencil.  And the back office sorted things out and matched up your stock and there wasn't too many complications.  Yes, dividends, and rights issues, and those sort of things did put pressure on the office, but from our point of view any sort of computerization didn't come in until, oh, several years later.

BA: Can you describe briefly your career now as a partner?

GL: Yes.  Well, it went on 'til 1968 I think, when we incorporated and we went public [later].  We were the first Stock Exchange firm to become a Public Limited Company in 1973.  And I was a Director of the company, obviously, with the change in the status of the company.  We were floated at 60 pence and fortunately achieved a small premium on the first day.  After that Tony Lewis became Chairman, I think it was 1976 when Henry Marks retired, and I became Deputy Chairman of the company. 

BA: Yes, now could you tell me something about the background of those two steps: incorporation, and becoming a public company?  Was this something that many jobbing firms were doing?

GL: No.  We were the first, and the only other quoted one that became [a public company] was eventually Ackroyd and Smithers.  I think they became a public company, yes, quoted company.  Again, it was from financial and tax angles and, particularly being relatively small, the added status - the solidity of being a publicly limited company. The senior partnership, the directorship of that time, took the view that this would enhance Smith Brothers' position, and allow us to deal in considerably greater size than we had even been doing previous to that.

BA: So by this stage there was quite a conscious policy to expand the firm?

GL: Yes. Yes.

BA: What were the reasons for this? 

GL: Well, I think the younger element which comprised, if you like, mainly Tony Lewis, David Heath, my brother, Gerald, and myself, was perhaps nudging the partnership to get on with it, and [saying], 'let's get out into the big wide world'.  I can't recall actually having had a meeting and saying this is what we want to do but I think they knew and could feel us flexing our muscles.  And I must say going back a few years, they'd been very generous in the distribution of the percentage that we received from the firm.  They had seen that they needed to encourage youngsters and I think they had seen the firm was motoring and everybody was benefitting to a certain degree from it, and a fair amount of that was down to the youth and enthusiasm of the younger brigade.  And as the firm got a little bit bigger and we took on new people who became partners, it was just natural that it had to spread a little bit to go on.  So that's what happened.  

BA: Was it a steady process of expansion?  Or was there a point at which you took off, as it were?

GL: I think probably where we mainly took off was a little bit later on - from about 1976 onwards, when Tony Lewis became chairman and, fortunately, it coincided with a tremendous burst in the equity market, very big.  This is not to decry the fact that we were doing quite well in the international markets.  We had taken up other stocks: we had taken on rubber stocks and various things like that.  Australian stocks we had taken on in the late 60s, I think it was, and we were a major part of the Australian gold boom when Poseidon went from about a pound to #125 and came back a fair way as well.  Very exciting times.  It was only a question of how much better they opened up in the morning.  Every day it was #3 higher, #5 pounds higher.  That was 1970, if I recall correctly, and we had done rather well out of that, so we had expanded the firm very considerably. Then there was a little bit of a pause, I think, in the international scene and the equity market took off a bit and then we made a sort of conscious policy to really attack it.  Fortunately, by that time we had gathered a pretty strong team of fellows around who had been with the company: they had come up through the company, knew the ways, the thoughts, the style, the ethos, and we had a very, very good sporting team.  

BA: This was about the mid '70s?

GL: About the mid '70s, yes.

BA: So how would you describe the firm or the company at this point?  About how big were you?

GL: In numbers, I should think we must have been about a hundred strong altogether, round about that time. 

BA: And at the top, roughly how many?

GL: At the top we had, I think it must have been about ten directors, then.  Quite a lot of youngsters had come in, including Michael Marks, who is now chief executive and has been with the company thirty years (so you can see he started round about 1957, something like that) and there was a terrific spirit in the company: a lot of similar interests. We were very sociable; we did a lot of social mixing; we did see each other after hours; a lot of entertaining amongst the people, which I don't think always applied in a lot of the other jobbing firms, certainly.  Then there was the great telecommunications boom of the late '70s and onwards, and that went on for several years, interspersed with the gold boom of, I think it was of 1980, when the gold price rocketed to five hundred and something dollars, and by then we were, I think, the only player virtually in the gold market; so we did pretty well out of that.  As far as I'm concerned it went on until, oh, after the Telecom privatization, up until '86/7, when I was trading. Tony Lewis retired as the executive chairman in, I think it was April '87, and became non-executive chairman and Michael Marks and I became joint chief-executives. That lasted until I retired on a full time basis in April of this year.

BA: Well, I'd like to come back to that just at a later point.  I'd like to ask you at what point did you start to take on board new technology?  At what point did it seem to make a difference to the firm?

GL: Yes, yes it did [make a difference].  We - I'm just trying to remember when we got into really beginning computerization - I think it was around about the 1976/7 mark, but you are probably asking the wrong chap about computers and technology.  I don't understand it and basically it was somebody else's job to sort that angle out.  I'm sorry, but I don't know.

BA: Were you having to move premises to adapt to the new technology...?

GL: No.  We managed to take more room in Salisbury House, where we had been installed for some time. That worked for a fair period of time and we managed to house the computers in the back office and to a considerable degree in Salisbury House. 

BA:  And how did you actually manage recruitment of staff?  Is this something that you did assume a policy about?

GL: Basically it was on an introductory basis.  If any of our people knew bright youngsters, all we wanted was rather bright, intelligent, sharp, youngsters.  At one time, I think ludicrously, we prided ourselves on the fact that we hadn't got a university chap in the firm, which was quite obviously narrow and old-fashioned. Now we have a very considerable number and we've got a programme for them to bring them on and test them.  The world has changed so considerably you need different attributes.  But a lot of our people started from leaving school even at sixteen, seventeen...

Tape 2, side 1

BA: You were explaining that at that time you didn't take people on with University degrees, they were seventeen year-olds...

GL: Yes, I think we were so uneducated ourselves that we were slightly suspicious of higher education. Fortunately, we had a fairly high success rate.  We took the view that it was better to be cruel fairly early on if somebody wasn't making the grade, and we would tell them at a pretty early age, at eighteen or nineteen, we just didn't think they quite had the talent, the market mentality.  Of course, in those days we were just a trading outfit.  Now we're an integrated house, whatever that may mean, with broking angles and everything of the sort, but in those days just a trading house. It may have been rather hard but at least the boys could then go on and find a job without being too far along in the world and having a thump on the nose when they thought they were on the right trail.

BA: Now thinking about Smiths again at this point, sometime around the mid '70s, did you feel there was anything distinctive about Smiths in comparison with other jobbing firms?

GL: Yes, I think so.  And I think I was very lucky to be involved in [it]. As I said before, I think they had this tremendous team spirit.  Everybody knew what was going on, we tried not to hide anything from anybody.  Perhaps in a way we were a little bit lax in security but we took the deliberate view that most people should know what is going on and we trusted people to maintain security to a pretty high degree. We didn't have much careless talk, costing lives or money.  I think the degree of involvement of particularly the younger people in our firm has contributed very considerably to the success of the firm and has even lasted right up to this moment where we've retained a hard core of a very considerable number of people who have been with us since school age.  Obviously, as you go on, you know their faults, their foibles, their good humour, their bad humour, their mild idiosyncracies and you knock them together and you make allowances for some and no allowances for others, and, touch wood, it has been a tremendous team effort.

BA: What had actually happened to the business of jobbing? Now, again, thinking of the '70s and starting with the actual mechanics of jobbing on the Floor of the Stock Exchange.  Was it very different to when you'd started? Or was it basically the same?

GL: It was pretty much the same. But more sophisticated means of acquiring profit were being brought in all the time.  There was the expert stagging of various issues, BP issues - very, very big issues which were on offer at the time - and Cable and Wireless - the privatization of Cable and Wireless, the Telecom one, the - I've forgotten what was before Telecom - but whatever it was.  There was a much more sophisticated approach, whereby the company and various outposts of the company stagged these issues pretty heavily and they brought in very considerable rewards.  That sort of thing didn't go on, certainly in our company, to the degree that it has done in the early days.

BA: Could you explain briefly what was involved in, as you say, expert stagging?  Perhaps with reference to a particular example.

GL: Well, for example, one that I remember very clearly was the Cable and Wireless, which was, we thought, priced fairly cheaply by the government.  They had to get it off, and it was quite an exciting title.  Cable and Wireless were just coming into the new areas of communication and everything was for them.  The simple thing was that we went round to the bank or to various banks and borrowed as much money as we humanly could to stag or apply for as many Cable and Wireless shares as we could possibly get.  Well, in those days, if an issue was oversubscribed by a certain number of times on most occasions you got a percentage allotment.  There was no cut-off point, so if you could apply for a very considerable number of shares and let's say you got twenty per cent of your shares and they opened up at a premium of thirty per cent, it was a very profitable exercise and this was got down to an extremely fine art.  Multiple applications were, I think, allowable in those days so you could apply in various degrees in the same name for various amounts of stock and there was a sporting chance that you would get your percentage allocation.  Obviously, in time the authorities got wise to this and very much more sophisticated and they've now introduced rules and regulations for the new privatisations particularly whereby you cannot make multiples.  But that was one, again, which probably had been done to a greater degree than in our own firm, either selling short of old stock and buying new stock when there was a rights issue. And as you went on and built up reserves, you could do this to a much, much greater degree for a longer period of time. Due to the vagaries of the market or various individuals, who had to sell on a particular occasions, you would buy some very cheap stock [in a company] of perhaps old ordinary stock as against the new stock or vice-versa, and we could do this on a much greater basis than we could previously.

BA: What had happened to the number of jobbing firms; now again, thinking about the development of Smiths during the 60s and 70s?  What was happening to other firms?  

GL: Quite a large number of the jobbing firms went out but quite a considerable number of those people, the ordinary traders, not so much the partners - the senior partners - but the ordinary traders and perhaps junior partners gravitated to the bigger firms and the bigger firms became bigger and the smaller firms went under, basically, or disappeared.  Wedd Durlacher - the amalgamation of Wedd and Durlacher - became a very, very potent force and were the leading Stock Exchange firm for some considerable time.  Ackroyd and Smithers was another amalgamation and of course those two, were the two very big guns in the gilt market. And when the government was knocking out gilt stock by the hundreds of millions during the '70s and early '80s, they were creaming it. They had a virtual monopoly on the situation.  Incidently, we did have a very, very tiny flirtation on the gilt market in which I was involved, in, I think it was 1973; but it was no great success, I was by no way....

BA: Can you explain the background to this?

GL: Yes. Well, we had decided that we ought to try to expand our areas of operation a tiny bit and we looked at the gilt market because there was such a high turnover.  And we heard of a little firm called R.H. Prance, who wanted to try and continue.  The three partners there were all over 70 and they wanted to try and tick it over. We became involved in discussions and you had to apply to the government broker to be accepted as a gilt jobber. You had to have a "Z" account at the Bank of England and go through all the formalities. It was a totally different game.  Well, we got somewhere along the line, took over R.H. Prance and one of our partners was scheduled to go in then, David Heath. But, at the last moment, the senior partners had a change of heart and they asked me if I would do it.  To be blunt I knew nothing about the gilt market and don't know a lot about it now and thought you could sort of slightly go in there and use the methods that one uses in the equity market.  I may be exaggerating a little bit. I'd done some homework but I found it a little bit foreign. We went in there and I think we were a little bit unlucky, in certain respects, because the government broker changed the rules by which he was operating.  He used to have various taps whereby he would supply stock on bids from the jobbers and also he would take stock if the jobbers were in a little bit of a mess. But very, very shortly after we went in, it became a free for all.  At the same time I think interest rates went up very considerably, the economy was in a bit of a mess and we were just on the verge of the property crash at that particular time. So all in all the thing was a little bit of a mess.  Added to the fact that we were very inexperienced and quite obviously didn't do it terribly well, and couldn't quite understand the mechanics of how the government broker operated. The big two had a look at everything first of all and while you were waiting on the fringes the whole market was changing, so it was a rather difficult operation, certainly for us.  We retired hurt after a fairly short period of time, I think we were only in there for about 3 and a half months, and lost I think it was about #380,000, which was a pretty considerable sum to us in those days, but which is, I won't say an insignificant amount these days, but is several times the P and Ls of one book - or can be in these days.

BA: Now was it at this time that you were also thinking about a merger with Bisgoods?

GL: The Bisgood merger was proposed in 1977, I think, and I didn't like the idea terribly much.  Without any disrespect to Bisgood, I didn't think we would get on terribly well with them.  The idea was proposed by Tony Lewis and Ed Puxley, who was the managing director of Bisgood at the time.  And we explored the possibilities and it was going ahead and fortunately, but somewhat ludicrously, I thought, the Monopolies' Commission intervened on the most doubtful of reasons.  I think there was an overlap in about 27 stocks and this was the reason given for an investigation by the Monopolies' Commission. I don't know whether the authorities had suggested the Monopolies look at it, but it really was on the flimsiest of basis really.  However, this went on and eventually the Monopolies' Commission cleared it and we as a company, we had done quite a lot of work with Bisgood and looked at it and as I said, my heart really wasn't in it.  We had our own board meeting prior to discussing the situation and, I think, it is the only time I ever disagreed with Tony Lewis on a major issue. Normally (by that time I was deputy Chairman) normally you don't argue. The executive of a company sorts things out prior to things and then puts recommendations, if you like, to the rest of the board.  This was a very divisive sort of issue in the company and its the one occasion I totally disagreed with Tony. I said to him at the time of the board meeting, or just before the board meeting, 'I'm giving you warning, Tony, that I'm going to have to disagree with you absolutely, and I'm going to have to vote against this and give my reasons why.'  In fairness, Tony said to me 'OK'.  Anyway the vote went against merger.

BA: Could you briefly describe the arguments for, the arguments against, and what were the main motives behind contemplating this merger?

GL: I think the added size and clout that it would have given us.  I think, Bisgood were, technically, better than we were.  Ed Puxley was a top class administrator.  We hadn't got a top class administrator.  They had a very able finance man by the name of Lunn, I think it was, who would possibly have come, but then, I think at the last moment, decided he didn't want to come in a merged outfit.  I didn't like the idea because of what I thought would be, the crashing together of incompatible personalities from the trading, and I don't think that Bisgood had such a high rating in the Stock Exchange as we had.  I don't want to be unfair to them, but I genuinely don't think they had such a high rating.  I thought we were a firm on the up and up that could go it alone, and we didn't need the bulk of the business contribution.  One or two positive parts quite definitely but we were beginning to be a bit of a power, more than a bit of a power, in the equity market, particularly.  The golds were going along, although it was a little bit quieter.  Then we were getting within striking range of Wedd and Ackroyd; had equalled or overtaken Pinchin Denny, who were quite a big force then; and it just did not appeal to me in the slightest.

BA: Well, this brings us relatively close to 'Big Bang' and probably the last area we could talk about; and that is again, the jobbing system in general terms.  You say you felt you were on the up and up right up to the reform of the Stock Exchange.  Was the Jobbing system still an efficient way of organizing business?

GL: I like to think so, yes. Yes, business was transacted in a very considerable degree.  There were some faults, I mean there are some faults in the new system.  The advantages which have been explained, I should think, thousands of times are the face-to-face situation that one always had on the floor of the house, whereby business could be done very, very quickly, very efficiently, and any problems sorted out talking as principal to principal immediately. You know exactly who you were dealing with and should there have been any problems or misconduct, or anything of the sort, it could be rectified almost immediately.  

BA: Incidently, were you all still going down to the floor of the Exchange?

GL: Yes, most of us, although with the growth in the industry and the computerization, back office had increased very, very considerably.  It did need far greater reserves of back office organization than several years ago, and as I was going to say, things did get more complicated as time went on.  

BA: Was there any momentum for changing the jobbing system building up from anywhere?

GL: Well, I think the powers that be did this deal with Cecil Parkinson...

BA: This being the Stock Exchange Council?

GL: Big Bang, yes Council, the Council, whereby we had to open up and abolish minimum commissions.  Now I've never been quite convinced, myself, that the abolition of minimum commissions necessitated a free for all and one had to be an intergrated securities house because commissions were going to be free to be negotiated. But a fairly considerable body of opinion thought they couldn't survive if there was going to be this fight on the commission line. Now I think the gilt market, particularly, should take a lot of blame for this, or the gilt brokers, because they had a glory run for several years and the major gilt-broking firms were coining it hand over fist and resisted very, very strongly any moves to reduce commissions, and this, I think, got up one or two noses, maybe politically as well. And there was this pressure to change and again, in fairness, there was the internationalisation of the various Stock Exchanges, communication was so quick - virtually instant these days - that it was necessary to have some change; but whether it was necessary to go quite as far as total integrated securities houses to the degree that we have done, I personally have my doubts.  

BA: How did Smiths cope with the changes?

GL: Well, we were the one house that made a public show of wanting to stay on the floor of the House and we stated that if it was viable, we would stay on the floor of the House and maintain a presence on the floor of the House.  By that time, we were doing virtually thirty percent of the equity turnover, which shows how much we had progressed. I think it had peaked out at just under 33 percent which was almost too much because you had too much obligation on you  to trade everytime. You had to commit yourself to very, very large size to do that sort of business all the time.  We had overtaken Wedd and Ackroyd and we did make a very, very strong effort to stay on the floor of the House. But within a short space of time we found it wasn't viable and we'd made alternative arrangements to have dealing rooms upstairs where we went every night after the close of the floor of the House. So it was only a question of really coming in and dealing from the offices in the morning as most of our competitors did.

BA: Was it an expensive process for Smiths, did you have to buy in a lot of new equipment? 

GL: Yes, yes, yes.  Dealing screens, they are all expensive. Computers aren't the great money savers that everybody expects them to be. The more you computerise, the more you need expertise to manage them, mastermind them, repair them, replace them.  With the integration when we took over Scott Goff Layton, which was a small broking house in 1986, which brought in all the differences of a broking business to a jobbing business, we had to spend quite a lot of money on computers.  They had a quite a big private client business which we sold within about eighteen months, I think.  We just found that it wasn't paying. But it does take up a lot of paperwork and machinery processing all this stuff.

BA: Well, I would like to ask one concluding question, and that's, reviewing your own career on the Stock Exchange, what would you say it took to be a successful jobber?

GL: In my case, I suppose a little bit of inborn trading talent.  I was never coached in it but I suppose I had it because I got to where I have.  A bit of luck, quite a lot of luck in being in the right place at the right time, although I sometimes think that if you have a little bit of talent you get to the lucky spot somehow or other, I don't quite know how.  I think the trust and friendship of a hell of a lot of people really, and I don't think very much else.

BA: Good, I think we can stop there.  Thank you.

GL: Thank you.