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

Interview No. 13:  Geoffrey Green

Interviewer: Bernard Attard

Home: 27th February 1990

Tape 1, side 1

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

GG:  17th March 1946 in Hampstead.

BA:  And who were your parents?

GG:  Ronald Green was my father and my mother was Ivy May Green.

BA:  And what did your parents do?

GG:  My father worked for the Gas Board as a meter inspector, which meant he read the gas meters for the quarterly bills and my mother was a housewife.

BA:  Did you ever know your grandparents?

GG:  Yes.

BA:  Do you have any particular memories of them? Any particular memory of one of them?

GG: They came originally up from the country really, but then they lived in North London, in the Tottenham area and my mother's grandfather worked with horses, to do with the railways, with the transport of goods from the local railway stations to wherever it might be, and my father's father was a bus driver. That was in the days before London Transport, though; they had the separate companies. He worked for the [London] General Bus Company 

BA:  So absolutely no connections or background with the City.

GG:  No, none whatsoever.

BA:  Where did you go to school?

GG:  I always lived in Enfield, and I went to school in Enfield, to a central school, George Spicer central school, where I took O Level.

BA:  Do you have any brothers or sisters?

GG:  No.

BA:  Did you have any plans once you came towards the end of school, what you'd do with your life?

GG:  No.  A few of us, when we left school, didn't know quite what to do. The area I had grown up in was quite heavily industrialised and a lot of them went to work in factories.  I didn't particularly fancy that and a family friend who did work in the City suggested why didn't I try the Stock Exchange and stock broking.  So I thought well let's give it a try.  I contacted the Stock Exchange who sent me along to what was known as the Stock Exchange Clerk's Provident Fund, which was where member firms of the Stock Exchange would list any vacancies they had; and the Clerk's Provident Fund, if people came in looking for jobs, would send them along to the individual company.  So [it was] like an employment bureau for member firms of the Stock Exchange.  Having contacted them they sent me along to Bisgood Bishop, or arranged an interview for me at Bisgood Bishop. At that stage I didn't know the difference between a broker and a jobber, and the fact that Bisgood Bishop were jobbers.  I was interviewed by Victor Pagram, as a result of which I started work with the company in August 1963.

BA:  Before we start talking about Bisgood Bishop, just going back to your background a little bit, who would you say had the greatest influence on you of your parents?  Would you say they had a strong influence on you?

GG:  I don't think they had a particularly strong influence.  My mother probably more than my father.  We had a relatively hard upbringing.  There was never much money in the family and so I was determined to try and make something of my life and be perhaps a bit more comfortable than they had been.

BA:  What was the attitude to money in the family?

GG:  Good point. If you couldn't afford it, you didn't go out and buy it on hire purchase.  In fact everything was paid for by cash, apart, of course, from the house which was mortgaged, but they had finished paying that off before I started work; and so we had fewer things than perhaps some of our neighbours, or some of my school friends did, because they didn't believe in hire purchase, as it was commonly called in those days.

BA:  And you mentioned that you'd thought about the Stock Exchange through a family friend connection.

GG: Yes, well my Godfather actually.

BA:  Was he with a broking firm or ...?

GG:  He had been with a broking firm prior to the Second World War. On his return from the War, he had joined a Unit Trust Company, which was more in its infancy in those days, but subsequent to that he'd always worked in the Unit Trust business which was of course allied to the Stock Exchange.

BA:  And did you have any conception about what the City or the Stock Exchange was about?

GG:  I don't think I did, not really.  No, in those days your school didn't have visits to the City and this that and the other, so you became aware of these things.   I must admit there wasn't much in the way of career advice or help from the school or various teachers.  It was a question of if you had a particular interest, fine, then they would help you along that path.  I had no blinding interest.  It was more of a technical, if you like, than an academic interest.  I was quite good at what was known as technical drawing, things of that nature, and metalwork etc. rather than the academic side.  But [I had] no conception of the Stock Exchange at all.

BA:  What was the reaction of your friends when you told them that's what you were going to do?

GG:  I can't honestly remember.  None of my friends were following a similar route.  Most of them either worked locally.  We all seemed to go our own different ways.  I now have no contact with my school friends at all.

BA:  When was it now that you joined Bisgood Bishop?

GG:  It was in August of 1963, the year I left school. 

BA:  And what was the first job they had you doing?

GG:  It was in the general office, or the back office as it was known.  It was some clerical work. I think it was called the "Name over department", because obviously in those days we didn't have computers, everything was done by hand - hand ledgers and this sort of thing.  It was a small department working with someone who'd been there for quite a number of years, basically ledger work and paper work.

BA:  How would you describe the firm when you first joined it?  Was it a big firm?

GG:  I can't recall in those days how many people.  No it wasn't a big firm.  It was a small firm. I'm not sure exactly at that time but it did have aspirations to become more of a medium-sized firm. But it was half a family firm, if you like.  It was named as you know Bisgood Bishop. At the time I joined there was one Bishop still in the firm, although in a relatively junior capacity, the senior Bishops had retired or left. There were two Bisgoods still in the firm who were partners, quite senior partners.  But it was a happy firm - a happy place to work.

BA:  Did you have any other early impressions of the firm?

GG:  A distinction that it was two firms in fact, the half that worked on the floor of the Stock Exchange, the dealing side, and the office side.  Sitting in the office at twenty to four in the afternoon when the dealers returned from the floor of the Stock Exchange, it was a feeling of awe and admiration that here came these people who were working down on the floor. They had to walk through the General Office to the Dealing Room which was behind us, so it was like a transit through.  That was the only time you'd see them, and you'd just get on back to your work.

BA:  What were the offices actually like? Was there much in the way of office equipment?

GG:  I don't think so.  We had a holorith machine I believe it was called.  We used to have girls that punched cards, which was the early type of computer, which processed various pieces of information.  But apart from that just the odd typewriter.  No desk calculators, and things that think for you these days.

BA:  And how did you find working for Bisgood Bishop?  Were you happy with the job, or did you find it hard work?

GG:  No, I quite enjoyed it.  No strong recollection; I quite enjoyed it and was looking forward to having a career with them.

BA:  What was the next step for you?

GG:  I moved from doing office clerical work, to what's known as the checking department, and this bridged the office and the dealing side.  It was the link between the two. Because all the bargains that were transacted on one day on the Stock Exchange were checked the following day by the checking clerks of the various firms. In those days the checking department had left the Stock Exchange and actually had a room under a restaurant, Seaton's Restaurant, in the City.

BA:  Was that quite close to the Stock Exchange?

GG:  Only five minutes or so away.  The procedure was, in the afternoon from say a quarter to four onwards of a dealing day, once the dealers were back from the floor of the Stock Exchange, the checking clerks would go into the dealing room and on sheets, blue sheets for sold and yellow sheets for bought, we would write out by hand all the bargains that had happened that day, that were in what was known as the Jobbing Books.  Having done that, we would also then sort out the queries that had transpired from the previous day's business.  But having got the sheets of the day's business, the following morning we would then take those to the checking room as it was known, and just like on the floor of the Stock Exchange, the jobbers were in a fixed position, the same, day after day, so brokers would know where to find them;  the broker would come to you and would repeat the bargain that his firm had transacted the previous day.  If you agreed that they had bought 10,000 Plessey at £3, for example, and you saw which firm he was with because he was wearing a badge and likewise we were wearing a badge, you would tick that off, or initial it, and that bargain was then checked.  At the end of the morning session, anything left over, you then contacted the broking firm, either if they were still in the checking room or you'd go back to the office and use the telephone to check off the rest of the bargains; and any queries, which obviously did arise, price query, or an amount query, you would refer back to the dealers on the Stock Exchange floor to resolve the query.  The sooner the query was resolved the better, obviously, because prices are fluctuating all the time and it could be quite expensive to adjust a bargain.

BA:  Did any of the queries ever give rise to arguments actually in the checking room?  Or was it all fairly orderly?

GG:  Fairly orderly.  Obviously there were characters who might always insist that their dealers never got anything wrong and we must have made the error.  Yes there were often arguments.  It was a lively place.  And it was seen as a stepping stone to going to work on the floor of the Stock Exchange.

BA:  Do you have any memories that you associate with that time?

GG:  With the checking room?  I quite enjoyed it.  I enjoyed it more than the General Office work because it was meeting people from other firms and having verbal contact with them, and it was an important responsible job.  You couldn't afford to make mistakes.  Mistakes cost money.  My discipline of the family upbringing -  you had to be correct and disciplined.  Oh yes, I made mistakes, I'm only human.  I can't recall any major mistakes or any particular ones.  It was a straightforward job. If the job was done properly then there was no problem.

BA:  At this time did you have any contact with the more senior people in the firm, the dealers or the partners?

GG:  Yes, to resolve these queries.  And, as I say, you went in [the dealing room] in the evening once they came back from the floor of the Stock Exchange and you sat next to the dealer; you might be sitting next to one of the more senior partners, because he had his jobbing book, which he was referring to - they carried on dealing over the telephone, as you appreciate - and whenever they dealt they wished to write the bargain in the book, and I needed to get the book off him to write up the bargains, so there was a bit of a tug-of-war with the books.   One thing I do recall, particular partners were known for the scrawl of their writing, and it was quite an art to learn how to translate that.  Because that was the problem, if you'd incorrectly copied out their writing or copied a bought bargain for a sold bargain or whatever it was, then of course that would arise with a query next day.  One partner in particular, Mr. King, Len King, was known for his difficult handwriting.  The dealers would associate people with the firm, (as I did) that they were originally with, and some of these people, of course, had changed firms, or their firms no longer existed, and he [i.e. Len King] would often write in the name of a firm and I would think, I don't know that name, and have to ask him, and he'd say 'Oh, it was so and so, so and so'. He would then recall the person's name and you knew that he'd moved to another firm.  You'd learnt these things over a period of time. Or if he mentioned a firm's name, you'd say, 'I'm sorry that firm doesn't exist any more', he'd say 'Oh yes, that's right, they merged, didn't they?'  I think on one occasion he did actually put down the name of a firm that had ceased to exist before the War, but there we are.

BA:  Did any of the other senior people in the firm make an impression on you at the time?

GG:  Yes, although I think more of an impression when I got down to the floor of the Stock Exchange as a Blue Button.

BA:  And was that the next step, after being a checking clerk?

GG:  Yes, I was one of four checking clerks and after approximately a year, I think it was, Mr. Pagram called me into his office one afternoon and told me that they intended to give me a Blue Button, which meant I was an unauthorised clerk and I would be going down to work on the floor of the Stock Exchange with the dealers. This was, at that time, a pleasant surprise to me.  I wasn't expecting it then.  It came earlier than I thought.  I was one of the junior checking clerks, and I do recall the two checking clerks who were more senior to me, because of their age and length of service in the firm, as a result of missing the boat because I'd leap-frogged over them, both subsequently left the firm.

BA:  Have you got any idea why that was the case?  Why you were promoted ahead of them?

GG:  I assume they thought I was doing a better job than they were, or would be a more suitable person to eventually become a dealer.  Presumably the partners, amongst themselves, had decided they needed a Blue Button and they chose me.  But, no, you'll have to ask them, really.

BA:  And how did one actually get one's blue button?  Did you have to do an interview in the Stock Exchange or was it just given to you one morning and you went in?

GG: No, it was just given to me.  I mean obviously the firm register your name at the Stock Exchange and they pay for the various positions.  I should think in those days to have a blue button wasn't particularly expensive.  No, I was just given the blue button and then it was a question of 'follow-my-leader'.  I had to make sure that I did the correct things when I went down to the floor with the other Blue Buttons.

BA:  What did you do as a Blue Button?  What were your jobs?

GG:  Well, you'd come in in the morning, you'd make sure there was enough pages in the book, because it was a loose-leaf book, the Jobbing books, that the positions agreed in the book to what the office thought they were.  The office tried to settle the bargains and the business and so you obviously had to agree.  You would then carry the books physically down to the floor of the Stock Exchange from the office, ready for the commencement of trading.

BA:  Were they big heavy things?

GG:  Yes, they were - quite stout, thick covers.  Yes, they were heavy books.

BA:  At about what time would you actually get into the House.

GG: In those days if I recall correctly, jobbers were allowed on the floor at 9.15 and brokers were allowed access at 9.30.  Bells were rung at both times.  A bell would ring at 9.15, jobbers were allowed on the floor to set up their pitch so to speak, and at 9.30 the bell would go and brokers would come in and trading would commence.

BA:  So you'd arrive with your jobbing book, and then what would happen?

GG:  Then you would put up the prices on the boards, because we had boards in those days, you would put up the middle price in black pencil - or in a chinagraph pen actually, because you were on a board - a sort of plastic board.  This was if you had had time to clean off the prices from the previous day, before you'd gone the night before.  If you hadn't because you were particularly busy and you'd just have had to take your books and run, then [in] that quarter of an hour between 9.15 and 9.30, you had to clean off the old prices with meths, a meths-soaked rag - you got quite dirty, smelly hands - and to put up new prices for that day. 

BA:  So once the prices had gone up...

GG:  Then you would stand by your dealer or partner, whoever you were working under, which book you were on, (you were assigned to a book) and you would listen and observe what was going on; you would wait for a dealer to turn round and he would say 'Right' and he would send you on a bid and offer run, to go and see a broker.  It did take some time to get to know the geography of the Stock Exchange, because the old Stock Exchange building was a bit of a rabbit warren.  It was more than one building, but walls had obviously been knocked down and you were running here and there and you had to know where to find these people rather quickly.

BA:  How did you feel when you first started?  Was it nerve-wracking?

GG:  I don't know about nerve-wracking, I was a bit awe-inspired with it all.  I felt very proud and privileged to work on the floor of the Stock Exchange; it was an honour and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was hard work and it was hard to get used to having to be on your feet all day long, the standing, and the walking about.

BA:  Did you have any other impressions of the Stock Exchange when you first started?  Not necessarily the first day but the kind of place it was, the kind of people who were in it - the way they dressed and behaved.

GG:  I wouldn't say it was like going back in time, but it was something that I had not been used to, if you like, the upper classes, even some of the middle classes, some nobility and people of this nature.  There were a lot of characters of course, and it hadn't changed an awful lot over the years.  Not a lot of publicity was given to the Stock Exchange in those days.  I can't recall when the Visitors' Gallery opened, but it was just about open at that time I think, but it wasn't heavily used, and the media didn't talk about the day on the Stock Exchange.  People wore spats and pin striped suits and had flowers in button-holes, which was something I wasn't used to  but came to admire and respect and quite like.  It was the tradition and I quite liked the tradition of the Stock Exchange.

BA: And who were you attached to? Who was the dealer you were working for?

GG:  The initial book I worked on was the commercial vehicle book, and that was headed by the then senior partner, which was Howard Taylor.  Under him were Tim Briers, who was the member dealer (being a member of the Stock Exchange) and the clerk under him was Terry Connor.

BA:  He was an authorised clerk.

GG:  He was an authorised clerk, and David Porter, was a Blue Button - he was the most senior Blue Button, and I was attached to them initially.

BA:  Did they stand simply together on their own pitch or was Bisgood Bishop on one pitch and all the different books were there together?

GG:  We were attached to what was known as Stand 10, and we were all standing around one pillar, apart from one book, which was the next book I moved onto, which was called the Aircraft book; that was under Ingram Capper. I soon moved onto his book and that was not around a pillar; that was where you had a wooden seat and you had a wooden board behind.  That was twenty feet away from the pillar, and the main difference there was we didn't have the plastic board for the prices, we had a cardboard sheet, which I had to renew, not every day, but the prices obviously were put up, not in the chinagraph pencil; it was a slightly different system.

BA:  Were they busy days?

GG:  Yes.  We are now talking of autumn 1964 and one of the first major events in the country that I recall from being on the floor of the Stock Exchange was the General Election. The Tory Party lost and Harold Wilson became Prime Minister.  It was his first period as Prime Minister and in those days on the floor of the Stock Exchange the [results for] individual parliamentary seats would be posted over near the War Memorial in the Gilt Market towards the end of the election, so you could begin to see the result - who was going to win and who was going to lose - and of course it was quite a shock that the Tories lost.

BA: What was the reaction in the House?  Either on members or on dealing?

GG:  I can't honestly recall.  I always seemed to be busy.  I liked to be kept busy.  Your mind was always occupied.  Because if you weren't doing the physical work of running around, bidding and offering, you were always listening in and observing, because that was how you learned your trade.

BA:  What were the people who you worked for like?  Again I asked you earlier whether you had formed any impressions about the more senior people in the firm, and you said that really didn't happen until you started in the house itself.

GG:  Once I started working on the floor, yes I did, form opinions.  Howard Taylor was the senior partner when I first went down. At that time he was in poor health.  He was obviously getting on in years and I believe he only had one lung.  He I think epitomized the firm as it had been for years and he was prepared, I think, to job along day by day, as long as they made enough to cover expenses and a bit of a profit I think he was quite happy.  He was quite interested in horse racing as well, I know, and in those days one or two brokers spent more time as book makers than as stock brokers.  One was a particular friend of the then senior partner, and he was constantly placing bets.

BA:  They'd actually be doing this in the house?

GG:  This was done on the floor of the house.  In fact someone did have a pitch where they used to put up, I believe, the prices of horses at various races, but although this was out of sight of the visitors' gallery, the Stock Exchange Council closed down this activity, not long after I'd been on the floor.  I think it was one of those things they'd turned a blind eye to over the years, but had decided it wasn't really the correct image.

BA:  Was gambling popular amongst Stock Exchange members?

GG:  Yes.  There were heavy gamblers.  But there were also people who were prepared to have a friendly punt, as you might call it.  I think because gambling is a risk and our business was a risk, it sharpened up your mind, if your money was on the line.  Howard Taylor, the senior partner - that was my impression of him.  Ingram Capper, the second partner I worked under, created quite a good impression on me.  He was I thought quite a good dealer, quite a hard task-master and had quite a reputation amongst brokers.  I found him very instructive to work under.

BA:  What do you mean by 'quite a reputation'? Was it a good reputation?

GG:  He was quite a dominating person, very large, very tall.  Obviously he was from a completely different social background [to] that I was used to.  I'd never come across that type before.  I think that Mr. Capper was the sort of person one would look up to anyway and he had quite a standing and a reputation in the Stock Exchange, which led to him becoming, to my knowledge, the first Council member that came from Bisgood Bishop.

BA:  And how long were you a Blue Button?

GG:  I was a Blue Button for three years, up till 1967, when I was authorised to deal.

BA:  During this time were you able to form kind of impression about what jobbing was about and what Bisgood Bishop was like as a jobbing firm compared with the other jobbers.

GG:  Yes, it was obvious, getting to know all the different firms, that Bisgood was a small firm but I think [had] the beginning of the pretensions to increase in size and standing - and that jobbers were a completely different breed to brokers.  Quite a lot of brokers, how shall I put it, didn't earn their money.  They didn't have to have the skill or the instincts that the jobbers had to compete to survive, to make their living on their turn.  Their business seemed to come to them by way of connections etc., they didn't necessarily earn it; as long as they had the business coming in they had their commission, they had their income.  Traditionally they had dealt for firms, for families or private individuals, obviously for years and years and years and it was regular business for them.  This was all to change.

BA:  Did you ever find any temptation to go over to the broking side of the industry.

GG:  No, I can't recall ever being tempted.  I was quite enjoying what I was doing.  In fact as I mentioned earlier, having been told to 'try stockbroker as a career', but ending up inadvertently in jobbing, I think I was probably better suited to it anyway.  I had no connection, if you like, I had no family or friends who would be able to give me business.  

Tape 1, side 2

GG:  I was more suited, I think, to jobbing, because I wouldn't be able to bring business into a broking firm.  I didn't come from the right background.

BA: Do you have any particular memories of life as a blue button - do any experiences stand out?

GG:  It was fun, I quite enjoyed it.  It was hard work, but you did enjoy it.  Working on the floor of the old Stock Exchange, there was a wooden floor, which used to resonate - you could feel that the market was busy or quiet or going up or down even, there was this feeling in your water, or in your bones of what was going on, how busy things were and you felt part of it.  Although you were working for different firms you soon established relationships, friendships with other people and it was a great place to work in those days, it really was.

BA: Where had you been living?

GG:  I was still living at home with my parents in Enfield, about ten miles north of the City, and commuting by train every day.

BA:  Now, in 1967 you became a dealer.

GG:  Yes.

BA:  What did that involve?

GG:  Again, I got it perhaps a bit earlier than I was expecting it, but the firm told me they wished me to become a dealer. I believe I had to go before a small committee of people of the Stock Exchange to answer one or two questions, fairly elementary ones, with which they tested your knowledge of certain facts or rules and regulations of the Stock Exchange, for admission to becoming a dealer.

BA:  Did you have any particular feelings about becoming a dealer. Did you feel ready for it? Or was it a frightening prospect?

GG:  I was nervous or apprehensive to begin with, but I soon settled down and became used to it.

BA:  Were you still working on Mr. Capper's book - aircraft?

GG:  On the aircraft book.  Yes, I was initially and then I moved over to work with Mr. Len King and his team which was a mixed bag of industrial and engineering shares.

BA:  About when was that?

GG:  This would perhaps have been in 1968.  I think this was to help bolster the team because it was at the time when Mr. King was going to go on a round the world trip.  This was a thing that the senior partners seemed to do, coming up towards their retirement.  They would take three months, perhaps a bit more off, and go and spend a bit of money doing something like this.  Mr. King I know went on a round the world cruise.

BA:  And so that left you a man short.

GG:  Well it left his book a man short.  Peter Ramsey was his number 2 and John Brown was his, if you like, no 3 and I became part of the team.

BA:  And how did it work as a unit.  Again, you stood close to each other?

GG:  Yes, but I suppose in a way you had to establish yourself as a junior dealer because the brokers obviously would come up to the more senior dealers because they'd obviously want to deal with the engine driver not the oil rag.  But obviously you had established friendships, as I said, with brokers' blue buttons over the years, and as they became dealers themselves, being younger chaps, they would naturally come to you, if you got to know them and that's how it went on.  You would develop your own friendships and working relationships.

BA:  Were you given your own separate book?  Were you dealing in....?

GG:  Not initially no, I was just working on 'the book'.  Initially you certainly didn't have your own book and you weren't responsible for your own P & L. 

BA:  And would you be referring back to the more senior members?

GG:  Yes.  Because you were standing in a crowd anyway, they would be seeing what was happening and you certainly would not take undue risks.  You would be referring back.  And gradually over a period of time, if they thought you were doing OK, they would obviously leave you to get on with it, and trust you, perhaps while they were out at lunch, on your own.  

BA:  Did you have any particular disasters that you associate with this time as a young dealer?

GG:  Perhaps not, because I can't seem to recall any particular disasters, no. 

BA:  Did anyone try and take advantage of you because you were new? 

GG:  Yes, yes.  The Stock Exchange was very strong on etiquette.  And although there was a general rule book of the Stock Exchange which was inches thick, it did not really have any dealing rules as such.  The dealing etiquette had built up over the years, and was unwritten.  It becomes a bit technical here, but one of the practices was that if a broker had asked you to 'come inside', which was to make a narrower price than you had originally quoted - if he'd asked you for a 'way' as it was known - then he would have to deal with you.  And one particular occasion I recall a rather senior gentleman having asked me the way, I then opened my way which didn't suit him, and he tried to walk away to go and deal or improve with another firm, which he was not supposed to do.  I stopped him, by saying 'Excuse me Sir would you mind holding on a minute', called in a more senior person on the book and having explained the situation, he then obviously had to deal with us.  Otherwise he would lose a bit of reputation and standing in the Stock Exchange.  Yes, he was obviously trying to take advantage of me.

BA:  Did you find generally that you were in a sort of antagonistic position with brokers, that you had to have your wits about you?  Or would they generally be a lot more friendly in the way they did business?

GG:  You had to have your wits about you, you had to be on your toes all the time because it was the sort of job, [where] if you didn't have your eye on the ball, they would take advantage of you if you were a bit slow in changing your price or realising what was going on.  You've got to realise that they're keen to deal a) to get their commission, and b) to do well for their clients, and you are keen to deal to make money for your firm and not to lose it, so you've got to make sure that if you're selling shares you can buy them back for a profit, or vice versa, which you could only do if you adjusted your prices accordingly.

BA:  Did you stay on that particular book for most of your jobbing career now.

GG:  No, I moved around from book to book. Over the years various reorganisations took place as we became more of a larger firm.  Under the auspices of Mr. Capper, we seemed to expand and deal in more sectors.  We acquired one or two smaller firms over the years.  One was called Philpott and Jupe.  We acquired some dealers from a firm called Anketell which gave us an entry into the shipping market, and as we gradually expanded, obviously teams were set up to cater for these different books.  The electrical market was something we expanded into and I became a dealer on the second line electrical book at one stage.

BA:  Was that for a long time?

GG:  That was for a few years yes, I can't be precise on dates.  But I did seem to evolve into more of what was known as a second line dealer.  I was better at dealing in second line stocks rather than what we call the leaders. This was perhaps because I could exploit the situation - or the prices better on second line stocks.

BA:  Was the type of market for second line stocks very different than for the leaders.

GG:  It was, perhaps not so much as it has become in later years.  Prices were perhaps wider in second line stocks and there may have been less jobbers dealing in them and so you needed to really know the stocks and to know the brokers. It's difficult to describe, but it was more specialist.

BA:  When you say you needed to know the stocks, did you actually do a bit of background research on the firms?

GG:  Yes, our company did not have a research department, such as the Wedd Durlachers and Akroyds and the Pinchins of this world.  So if you wanted to know about the Company you had to gen up yourself, either through talking to brokers and other dealers, reading up about them, [or] looking at what we used to call the 'Moody's' cards, which became the Extel cards; it was down to you.

BA:  And by the same token, did brokers use you as a source of information?

GG:  Yes, very much so.  What seemed to be the pattern, a client, normally obviously a private client, would ask his broker 'what do you think of so and so company? Should I invest in Plessey, for instance?' and if the broker wasn't too sure or didn't really know what the current feeling was - everyone knew what Plessey did, they made telephones or whatever it might have been - but  whether it was right to buy them at that present time, they would always come and ask the jobbers.  The funny thing about that of course, was that it's a bit like being a car salesman, if the chap came along and said 'what do you think of Plessey shares', although you gave a factual account about 'well, they had some good results last month or they're expecting some good results next month' or whatever you would know factually about them, if you were a Bull of them, obviously you would try to sell them.  You would talk him into buying them. Whereas if you were perhaps a Bear of them, and it didn't suit your book to sell them, you would try and put him off.  The same as if you go along to a showroom and you want to buy a certain type of car but they haven't got any to sell, they'll obviously try to sell you something else, or try and tell you, you don't really want to buy that one anyway.  So they were asking us an opinion on the Company where we obviously had a vested interest as to how we worded it or how we put it.  So I think it was the skill of giving them some facts and dressing it up with a bit of fiction.

BA:  Did you ever feel you were dealing with brokers who you felt knew more about the share or the company than you did.

GG:  Oh yes, quite often, very much so.  Obviously what was known as the shop brokers had an inside track, because, not the dealers necessarily themselves, but various people within their firms would be in day to day contact with those companies. In those days, of course, insider trading or the laws as such didn't exist, so company directors may well be divulging information to brokers which was not in the public domain, as a result of which a broker may well tell his clients, 'look, we must buy these shares'.  They'll come along and be buying them from you, and you would be unaware that the following week something would be announced, a major order or whatever, and the price would react accordingly.  You would get to know the people who would do this; therefore if someone dealt with you and bought the shares you would go out of your way to replace that position.

BA:  What was the attitude in the Stock Exchange to what we would now call Insider Trading?  Did people simply accept it as a fact of life and live with it?

GG:  I think so.  It was not perhaps on such a large scale as it is these days.  Volumes in those days were a lot smaller.  People were dealing in smaller amounts.  Yes, it was a fact of life.  It happened.  It was not perhaps so blatant. 

BA:  Did you have cases of jobbers forming too close relationships with brokers and taking advantage of that kind of information?

GG:  You mean jobbers forming relationships with brokers to take advantage of that?  Yes, but you didn't think of it as something illegal - it wasn't illegal, you weren't doing anything wrong.  If a broker said 'Look I'm keen to buy these shares, I've got clients who are keen to buy them, can you supply them?' If he had initially bought stock from you and he was therefore morally or ethically tied to you, he would leave you an order.  Yes, you'd go out to replace that stock and you would pass that stock on, and you would in the process perhaps adjust your book position from being a Bear to him initially to being a Bull, and keeping the Bull, although what you're buying you're passing on to him.  So yes, you might well form an alliance with a broker in that respect.  But it may be for something quite innocent.  They're just building up the position for some particular reason, they want a holding.  You wouldn't know, you wouldn't necessarily be told.  With the single capacity there was no need;  sometimes the less you knew the better.

BA:  Did you ever have cases of people taking personal advantage, I suppose that's what I'm getting at, a dealer, not necessarily even a partner, getting word of something through a broker and taking advantage of that, for his own gain.

GG:  Yes, I mean this only becomes evident when someone's bought shares from you and they subsequently move quite sharply.  But you'd obviously as time went on, get to know who were the sharp characters and who to look out for. And the beauty of the system as it operated then of course, was when they asked you a price and size in the first place you could make what you liked and say what you liked.  You would make a defensive price, an uncommercial price, or a price that was restricted in size, which virtually told the character 'sorry I don't really want to see your business.'

BA:  Well, let's resume the story of your career at this point.  You got married in 1969, how did you meet your wife?

GG:  My wife is Swiss.  She was living over here and working as a au pair girl in Enfield, where I met her, and we got married over in Switzerland in 69.

BA:  Again, what I had been interested in knowing was had you met her through the course of work or someone with a City background?

GG:  No, no I met her locally, socially, nothing to do with the Stock Exchange at all.

BA:  And as far as the Stock Exchange is concerned, in 1970 you became a Member.  What did that involve?  Were you encouraged to become a Member by the firm. 

GG:  Yes, you were told, 'look, we'd like you to become a Member,' because if you were a member you certainly had a lot more standing on the floor of the Stock Exchange from the firm's point of view, apart from you as an individual, you had more clout in doing business.  The snag was to become a member it was quite an expensive operation in those days.  You had to pay for your own membership.  It cost me something over œ2,000.  I can't recall exactly, but I think it was a thousand guineas entrance fee and the nomination as such, the share I had to buy cost me again, I think, about œ1,200 or so, which all came out of my own pocket.

BA:  And did it have any consequences for your role in the firm, or did you continue jobbing ...

GG:  Yes both within, but more importantly I think outside the firm, because you wore a different colour badge, you wore a silver badge as opposed to the silver badge with the black edge.  You had a plain silver badge as it was before they had coloured badges, and you certainly had a lot more standing with brokers which would give them more of a comfort factor in dealing with you; because if you were standing there as a Member representing Bisgood Bishop, then if Bisgood Bishop had faith in you, they must also have that commensurate faith in dealing with you.

BA:  Around this time, late 60s early 70s the old Stock Exchange was being demolished and the new one being put up.  Does that figure in your memories in any way?  Did it make any difference to trading, or make any difference to the atmosphere of the Stock Exchange?

GG:  Very much so.  Perhaps I'm a bit old fashioned here but I preferred the old floor of the Stock Exchange, I quite liked it.  I think it was about 66 that they put a wall up, a brick wall in the middle of the Stock Exchange floor, squashed us all into one half, with the addition of one or two office buildings which were adjacent, while they knocked down the other half and built the 26 storey tower.  Then we moved from the old floor of the Stock Exchange into what was known as the temporary market, which was on two different levels in the tower, whilst they subsequently knocked down the other half, and built the new floor, and then we moved back on.  But the old floor of the Stock Exchange with its wooden floor produced a sort of sound, and you could tell by the hum, the noise what was happening in the market, how busy, how quiet, even if the market was going up or down.  Whereas the new floor was lino, or whatever, and you just couldn't tell.  A lot of the character went, I'm afraid with the old Stock Exchange.

BA:  In what ways?

GG:  I don't know.  The jobbing firms had always stood in their traditional places on the floor, and the brokers had their boxes all round in different buildings, and there were Shorters Court, Capel Court, various names that obviously had been there for a hundred years or so, and it was part of history - it just changed completely.

BA:  Did the actual way you did business change in any way, the way you dealt with each other, or did that continue more or less the same?

GG:  Well they installed more modern communications. We had a lot more telephones on the floor of the new Stock Exchange.  We had one telephone I recall when I first went on the floor of the Stock Exchange in our firm, which was just a general link to the office, which was used very infrequently.  On the new floor virtually every pitch, and I don't know how many pitches we might have had, anything between 6 and 10 different books at that stage, all had their own telephone.  There was more modern means of relaying company results on the floor of the Stock Exchange now, pitches were called hexagons, for obvious reasons.  But the business of dealing was still the same of course.  The Jobbers had their pitches, the brokers walked around. The other thing that was coming at about this time was the admission of women to becoming Members and working on the floor of the Stock Exchange;  the odd blue button, the odd dealer and the odd woman Member, which had been heavily resisted.

BA:  Was that Jobbing firms as well as Broking firms?

GG:  It was, although it took longer, I believe for females to get a toehold or a foothold in jobbers than it did in brokers.

BA:  Why was that?

GG:  It was a tougher life, I think. Very difficult for a female to become a dealer, a Jobber.  I think broking was probably more suitable to them.  

BA:  Did any women become dealers?

GG:  Yes, this did take time.  The only reason they became Members on the Stock Exchange was because in about 1972 or 73, the various Stock Exchanges of the United Kingdom were amalgamated to become the Federation of UK Stock Exchanges, and the country firms had voted for membership.  London had voted against women members.  But upon Federation it was sort of forced upon us, through the back door.

BA:  Did the presence of women on the floor of the house affect the atmosphere in any way?

GG:  I think it did a little bit.  I do recall one broking member who did say that the day they allowed women on the floor of the Stock Exchange, he would resign and retire, and he did.  He stayed true to his word, and he retired early, never to walk the floor of the Stock Exchange again. But you had people who would go out of their way to be perhaps rude, abrupt, impolite, because they disagreed with the concept of women on the floor, and you would have others, perhaps the majority who would moderate their tongue and their language because when things got tough on the floor, the air did get a bit blue at times.  But of course the Stock Exchange floor was also a physical place, and if there had been a major company result, the Jobber's pitch was going to get crowded with brokers anxious to hear the price and perhaps deal, and there was no way that you were going to make niceties, no-one was going to say 'let the lady go first'.  But, give them their due, they didn't expect this, they wanted to give as good as they got, and they accepted this, they didn't come in with any illusions.  I must admit some of the girl dealers, the female dealers were OK, and over a period of time they became accepted and part of it.

BA:  You became a Member dealer in 1970.  What was the next stage on the progression?

GG:  It meant I had increased standing within the firm and on the Stock Exchange.  I had more people perhaps working under me.  I was becoming more senior now, running my own book as opposed to being a number 2.

BA:  Can you explain a little bit more about when it was when you began to run your own book? What that involved?   Again, if you can't remember the date, it doesn't really  matter.

GG:  I can't remember dates or particular books as such, but I was still attached under someone.  I think I was working under Terry Connor by now, but it meant I had a little bit more independence and more responsibility, and it certainly kept you on your toes, because if you had the responsibility of the profit and loss of a certain book, you were aware that [it affected] your remuneration, which was based on a salary and some sort of commission related to the profit of a) the firm overall but b) your individual performance at the year end.  It did give you a lot more to think about.

BA:  Did you have a particular attitude to Jobbing, or a particular technique?

GG:  I must have done.  One of the things about my dealing style [was that] I hated to lose money.  This might sound a silly thing to say, we all didn't like losing money, but I would accumulate small profits and they would gradually mount up over the weeks and months, rather than perhaps some of the more extrovert dealers who would take perhaps larger risks, make larger profits, but also make some large losses.  And the net result at the end of the year may well be the same and I may well be in front of them.  But it was over a lower profile, which is why I tended to specialise in second line companies.   And this remained with me over the years really.  I've always dealt in more second line companies.

BA: Did you feel you had to approach dealing in the second line stocks differently to dealing in the leaders?

GG:  Yes, I think so, you had to know a little bit more about the companies because [with] the household names - the ICIs of this world - brokers dealing in those shares were unlikely ask you particular questions, because it may well be common knowledge; everyone knew what they did.  But if you were dealing in stocks such as Wilkins & Mitchell, or Bain & Hodge, or companies of this nature, brokers who got these orders quite often didn't know what these companies did for a living, and they may well ask you about them, what they did, what the company was like, their profits record, and you would be expected to know more about the second line companies.

BA:  Were they very competitive markets, were there many other Jobbers dealing in these stocks?

GG: Yes, they were competitive, not so many market makers now of course, since Big Bang, but, oh yes, they were competitive.

BA:  Did you have much contact with your competition, during the course of the trading day?

GG: Yes, you would occasionally challenge them if you had a choice price, or there was a funny price, a backwardation; you would then go across and talk to them, but there was not the contact that there has been developed over the past few years.  You would tend to stand alone and get on with your own thing.

BA:  How did you find out what your competition was doing, I mean, how did you ever find out whether there was a choice of price?

GG:  Well basically you didn't  - you'd only find out if it was a choice price or a backwardation if a broker told you.  The etiquette again in those days was that brokers were not allowed to deal with you if there was a backwardation.  But of course he had to tell you.  If you made three six and someone else was making seven and a half, ten and a half, if you sold them at six he could buy them from you and go and sell them at seven and a half, he's made a turn, he's got the backwardation.  But if he didn't tell you, you may not know.  He could deal with you on a choice price, but more often than not if the broker was of good standing and you had a good rapport between the two of you, he may well give you a fraction more so you were not dealing on choice, but that was entirely up to him, that was his decision.

BA:  Did you have particular brokers who would always come back to you to deal?

GG:  You developed relationships with various brokers over the years, who would try to deal with you, because it's a two way thing.  You would tend to make them more of a commercial price, or you would try to do their business because you know that they are not necessarily going to be particularly hot or harmful to you, whereas other people you were a bit shy of - you knew people who were particularly friendly with other firms, so you would tend not to be too commercial to them.

BA:  I want to ask you now about a few of the practices that sprang up in the Jobbing system as the nature of the market changed and the institutions became more important.  Things like joint books, and minimum spread agreements, and so on.  Did you, as a Jobber, or as a Jobbing firm, have any experience of running a joint book with other firms?

GG: Yes, we had several joint books in stocks with various other companies, particularly with Wedd Durlacher.  

Tape 2 side 1

GG:  We had some joint books with Wedd Durlacher in machine tools, the reason being the shares of these companies I think must have been fairly tightly held, and by this time of course, the institutions were becoming more of a force in the market and they wished to deal in larger quantities.  It became a fairly well-developed practice, joint books, which I think was a healthy thing, because it improved the liquidity of the market.

BA:  How did you go about setting them up? I mean did you ever have to go and set one up...?

GG:  Yes, I don't know about setting them up.  I was obviously involved in them.  The particular partner at Wedd Durlacher, called Basil Sharpe, Commander Sharpe as he was known, dealt in machine tools, we dealt in machine tools - this was Ingram Capper, I recall, dealt in machine tools - and if we sold 5,000 shares to a broker, we would go and buy 2,500 shares from our joint book, which would give you the effect that you both sold 2,500 shares, and you would then of course both adjust your price accordingly.  So you could say from the broker's point of view it took out the element of competition, if you like, but if it wasn't for the joint book arrangement, or agreements, the broker may well find that he couldn't buy the 5,000 shares, he'd have bought perhaps 1,000 shares from each of us, and that would be the end of the story, the price would go up accordingly until we found sufficient stock to perhaps offer.  So it worked successfully.

BA:  And did the Jobbers normally work well with each other, or did you ever have any problems arising?

GG:  No, on joint books, no problems whatsoever - well not strictly true, there must have been some times we had problems, but generally it worked well together.

BA:  And was Bisgood ever involved in price agreements, minimum spread agreements?

GG:  Yes, although I think this came in at a later stage, a much later stage.  We were not particularly keen on them.  I particularly wasn't really keen on them, but if there were say four Jobbers and you'd been making a 1½d spread and you wished to go to say a 3d spread, then you would not wish to be the one that would spoil the party,  and leave three with a 3d spread and you with a 1½d spread.  You would generally go along with the majority.

BA:  Again, would you discuss these things beforehand?

GG:  Oh yes.

BA:  Who would do the discussing?  Was it the senior partners?

GG:  No, not necessarily the senior partner, but not just a junior dealer on the book, it would be a senior, someone of standing, a Member or someone running the book.  It may well be that one firm was particularly hurt and lost a lot of money in that share, likes the idea of widening his price, realises if he's the only one to do it, he's not going to see any business at all, so he gets together with the Jobber he's most friendly with in that share - perhaps persuades him, or they agree yes it would be a good idea to have a slightly wider price, they then approach the other Jobbers, perhaps leaving the one to last who they think they're going to have the most trouble with, to agree price agreements.

BA:  Can you remember any actual examples?

GG:  Not the setting up of them.  I need a bit of notice on that question.  They worked, but they were broken.  There were particular firms who were known to break the agreements, not blatantly but there were ways and means of doing these things.  It might often be the firm that had set up the price agreement in the first place which you'd all agreed to, was the one that was then quietly breaking the thing, thereby cornering the market.

BA:  Was this a fairly rare occurrence ....?

GG:  No, it was fairly common practice.  There was a lot of sharp practice that did take place and you had to be equally as sharp.  But obviously if it became too blatant, too obvious, you would just go and say, 'Look I'm not keen about this price agreement, I think it's being broken.'  You wouldn't necessarily accuse him of breaking it but discuss it with other Jobbers and you may well decide, no, we're not going to have a price agreement any more.

BA:  Were put-throughs featuring in the market in which you were trading?

GG:  Yes, they were. This was something that did increase over the years, again, with more of the institutions taking a bigger part.  The fact that the shares may well be tightly held, a broker, Cazenove, particularly these sort of firms would have large interests and large holders and known holders in the shares of these various companies, much larger than the general market size, and rather than start an order in let's say 10% of the order and leave the Jobber to work the balance, if he had trouble in doing this, or this may well take hours, perhaps even days, they would set up a put-through which would give them to right to try and undo the other half of the business with their clients.

BA:  Again, can you remember any particular examples of put-throughs that went wrong or worked well or were particularly big?

GG:  Particular examples, yes.  Brokers abused the rule at the time, rule 90. Len King was a stickler for rule 90, which meant that if a broker had a large order (and obviously he would get more commission if he could do both sides to the business i.e. it would suit him to do a put-through rather than just deal straight with the market) he ought to come to the market under the rule, and ask price and size, quote price and size to the various firms and the one that suited the initiating order first - i.e. if he was a seller, the one who was making the best bid - he would go to him and then he would gradually open up; and if he couldn't get a price in say quarter of a million, there was only a price on 25,000 or 50,000, he'd say 'right, I want to clear a put-through.'   They would then establish a price.  He would go away and try and do this.  Brokers abused this by perhaps going to another firm, not the most commercial firm, or not the one bidding the best price, set it up with them, knowing that this other firm would not be able to interfere with the business because they didn't have the facility to do so, or the broker may well set the other side of the business up before coming to the market.  i.e. he would skirt rule 90, have a selling order, make a buyer, come to the market, thinking 'right well I'm going to give you a turn here', because you see, they would give us a small turn for doing this.  But of course, we may well make more money by starting the order one way, transacting the business, making a buyer on our own behalf, at whatever price we decided upon ourselves; so a) we may well make more money by holding the order, or b) we may well have known business ourselves, which isn't common knowledge - until the broker approaches you, he wouldn't discover you had a buyer or a seller.  Therefore he may well be doing his client an injustice, because he's transacting the put-through, or trying to, on the wrong basis.  So they should have always come to negotiate with you.  Some of them didn't because they knew full well that they would lose the business or lose one side of the business if they did.  This often caused rows, especially with Len  King.  He was a stickler for the rule on that one.

BA:  Do you remember any particular occasions?

GG:  I can't, to be honest, not off hand.

BA: But the put-throughs, were they becoming a more frequent occurrence? 

GG:  They were.

BA:  You said earlier that a broker might go to a less commercial firm, who he knew wouldn't interfere, what did you mean by interfere?

GG:  Well if a Jobbing firm had some good business on, it may well decide to buy all the stock, for instance, therefore spoiling the brokers making the other side, making a buyer for his own business.  Therefore he would only be able to do one side of the order, which would reduce his commission.  So the broker going to this other firm, where he felt that there was not much chance of the jobber having the business, [meant] he [i.e. the jobber] would not be able to interfere with it.  

BA:  Were you as a firm involved - or you as a Jobber involved in underwriting arrangements in any way?

GG:  Oh yes, for rights issues and new issues.  This is a practice which developed later on.  You would be offered underwriting, and then you would judge by your own feeling for the market or that particular industry, or that particular company, whether you wished to accept the underwriting or not and you'd get a percentage commission fee for doing this.

BA:  Did you normally accept the underwriting?

GG:  Normally you would.  Obviously there were times when you would say no, and there were times you'd ask for more, but you normally wouldn't get more anyway.  But again the underwriting would be not necessarily taken by the dealer on that book.  He may well refer to a more senior person because obviously somebody had to co-ordinate what was happening all round the firm, and you don't want to stretch yourself financially.

BA:  Was there any point at which you began to run a book, completely by yourself, or run a pitch?

GG:  Yes.  This must have been, I suppose in the mid-seventies.  I'm a bit vague on dates I'm afraid, but probably by, mid-seventies I was running a pitch on my own with dealers under me.

BA:  And how did that work?  How did you relate to the other dealers under your authority?  

GG:  I was fairly relaxed in that obviously you would keep a motherly eye on them, but you would hope that once you felt they had sufficient experience and they were good enough to be left alone to get on with it, you would give them a fairly loose rein.  

BA:  Did you feel that bargains of a particular size had to go through you.

GG:  Yes, yes.  It would normally happen that people with large orders would come to you anyway, because it would probably be a more senior person who had them, but as time went on more and more younger people, junior people did get large orders in broking firms and then may well relate to someone who was a bit younger than you and [to] the dealer under you, but then he would be expected to refer to me.

BA:  How did you keep track of what everyone was doing?

GG:  By everyone you mean...?

BA:  Your dealers.  

GG:  Well, you see we still had the jobbing books.  You would constantly be looking through the jobbing book and thinking, if you are a Bull, you want to sell them, if you're a Bear, you want to buy them, for a profit.  As we were dictating the price, you would try to manipulate that price and create a supply or demand factor, by marking up or down the price on the board accordingly, or sending out bids and offers, using the blue buttons.  There was always something to do, even if the market seemed quiet - it was a quiet day, the index had hardly moved - you should always be trying to encourage or create business.

BA:  What kind of capital did you feel you required to run your book?  Can you roughly remember?

GG:  I was a fairly low capital user because I liked to keep fairly tight positions, because especially in second line stocks which were more tightly held, you'd be more exposed if you had a large open position in a second line stock to any particular news or developments.  So my capital may well have been quarter of a million pounds each way, which may well have been quite small at that time.

BA:  And did that more or less remain the figure right up through to Big Bang?

GG:  Oh no, that would have gradually increased. I never had any great pressure on my positions with my capital because I think they felt they could leave me to get on with it in my own way because I was known as a defensive jobber.   I just hated losing money, therefore my book was quite well controlled, much more than the average I think.

BA:  How did things unfold then until Big Bang.  Did you become a director?

GG:  I became a Special Director, in 1977, with Brian Cavell.

BA:  And what was that?

GG:  This was a new venture by the then Board. We became Directors of the Company, attended Board meetings and were given the standing of a Director both within and without the firm, but we were not directors under the Companies Act. We were on the notepaper as Special Directors, we did not have votes, I don't think at Board meetings. We were expected obviously to participate and take the standing of a director.

BA:  And did you ever get beyond the Special Director?

GG:  Yes, at some stage during the eighties in the run up to Big Bang, perhaps in 1984, I became a proper Director of the company.

BA: What did that involve?  You then had voting rights on the Board?

GG:  Yes, that would obviously have meant I became a proper Board member.  I think that the concept of the Special Directors had changed by perhaps about 1980.  I don't think we any longer attended the Board meetings.  But the Board meetings in those days were rubber stamp  affairs, the more senior directors had already decided beforehand what they wanted to happen, or how they wanted it to happen, or what they wanted to do, and it was merely a discussion forum and they forced through what they wanted anyway.

BA:  Did you think the firm ran differently because it was a company rather than a partnership?

GG:  Yes, although I find that difficult to describe in detail, not having been a partner.  I think the partnerships were perhaps a better way of running the Stock Exchange businesses because every partner had a say, depending on the status of his partnership and how much money or capital he had in the firm; but it was his money on the line, where when we became a limited company and had outside shareholders, it was a completely different thing.

BA:  Now, I've already asked you about the change from the old House to the new House and whether you had any memories of that, there are just a few other things I want to ask you about, whether you do have any memories you associate with those times, but if you don't just say so. Don't worry, it's not meant to be like extracting teeth.  Had you become a dealer when the pound was devalued in 1967 and the Stock Exchange was closed for a day, does that ring any bells?

GG:  No.

BA:  No, it doesn't, so that doesn't feature in any way.  Did the Poseidon boom....?

GG:  Yes, I can recall the Australian Poseidon boom.  It had no effect on us because we didn't deal in Australian shares, but I well remember it.

BA: Was there a lot of activity in the House around the markets in which the Australian stocks were traded? 

GG:  Yes, that was, of course, the late sixties and I recall that [in] stocks such as Western Mining, one of the majors, a hell of a lot of activity, and yes, very busy at that time.

BA:  What about the collapse of Rolls Royce?

GG:  Ah, now there we were involved in dealing in Rolls Royce.  Ed Puxley, by that stage, I can't recall if he was the senior partner; of course that was in 1971 when it became a limited company, so it was about that time. Jimmy Bisgood was still there.  Yes, we made a lot of money in Rolls Royce, because the feeling was that it was worthless.  English shareholders were selling, the Americans were buying.  Subsequently of course they proved to be right in that the payout in later years was a lot higher than was thought at that time.

BA:  Did it have a knock-on effect on any other shares the firm was trading in?

GG:  I can't recall it having so.  But of course it was the fact that the Government were allowing Rolls Royce to go to the wall rather than bailing them out, so there must have been a bit of a knock on effect with other companies where it was thought, 'well hang on, if the Government aren't prepared to back, a name like Rolls Royce, they're not going to back certain other companies.' I think perhaps, yes, in machine tools.  I think Alfred Herbert was a case in point, one of the large machine tool companies, where these companies were coming under a lot of pressure from overseas businesses in the same field - it may well be German, Italian, Japanese; machine tool companies did come under a lot of pressure and were going to the wall.  Yes, there must have been a knock on effect and lower share prices.  

BA:  But basically there was still a good market in Rolls Royce?

GG:  Yes there was good two-way business in that Americans were buying and the British were selling.

BA:  It didn't create any particular crisis for the firm?

GG:  No, on the contrary.  We would thrive on two-way business.  To us, sad as it may seem, it doesn't matter that the company was going bust or going to the wall, as long as there was two-way business, we were happy.  Obviously, companies that are taken over as well as going bust, once the company's been taken over, you've lost a potential source of revenue and income because they're no longer there to be dealt in. But during that run-up period to a liquidation or take-over, as long as there's good two-way business during that concentrated period of time, the volume would increase and therefore your potential for making money would increase.

BA:  Do any particular take-overs figure in your recollection?

GG:  Yes there were a few companies which were taken over where I made quite a bit of money.  But one company that does spring to mind is London and Liverpool.  This was used as a shell company some time in the early eighties; it must have been by a group of directors who changed the nature of the company.  One of the major businesses that they wished to develop was the filming of football matches, Saturday football matches, then video them out to clubs, and they would have the sole rights to these on the Monday morning.  This was obviously opposed by the television companies, but they did win the rights, but they lost on appeal over a period of time.  But this created a huge boom in these shares which soared from about 50 pence up to about, I think about £7 at one stage, before the bubble burst and they sank back to a mere few pence before the company was put into the Receiver's hands.  And during this period there was enormous volume in the shares and a lot of money was made.  It was one of the stocks I was dealing in - I think I made record profits for one stock on one particular day, or one stock during one particular Stock Exchange account, at that time.

BA:  What happened when the price of the shares started to drop?  Did your profits begin the disappear or were you still making two-way business?

GG:  No, you were acting accordingly and I was running a Bear position.  I was trying to make sure I was short all the time, but there were violent swings both ways and in those days of the Stock Exchange account and new time buying, there would always be the odd punter who thought 'they've fallen from let's say œ6 to œ4 in three weeks, there's a lot of people out there still believe the story that the company would prosper', therefore they'd come in and buy them new time for the next account.

BA:  Now for the benefit of the tape could you explain what you mean by you were running a Bear position all the time?

GG:  Yes, I would be selling stock or adjusting my price so I would sell stock that I didn't own, in anticipation [of a fall]; if I felt the price was going to fall, I obviously wished to be short of stock and to hope to buy them back at a lower price at some later stage, therefore realising my profit.

BA:  And that was quite a successful technique was it?

GG:  Yes, it was more perhaps difficult to run a Bear than to run a Bull, especially when a company, such as in the case I mentioned, London and Liverpool, was starting to look a bit sick, because you had to attract the buyers.  This was done quite drastically at times.  You may well be a Bull to start with but you'd call the price down, and cut your Bull position, and create a loss by at some level attracting a buyer, and then not calling them up, you may continue to call the price down, to sell more stock to more buyers.  Yes, this was quite a successful operation.

BA:  Let's go back in time to when the whole Stock Exchange looked a bit sick in 1974, when there was a record crash in values.  Do you have any memories associated with that time; for example, did it every occur to you that the whole thing was going to collapse and you ought to think about another career for example?

GG:  It was worrying, I recall Stock Exchange firms were closing down, people were losing jobs etc.  I think I had faith in my ability and the ability of my firm to see it through and the nature of the way I ran things - and this probably reinforced the way I ran things, running tight books - subsequently [meant] I wasn't hurt too much in the particular stocks I dealt in.  I can't recall any particular examples, but by maintaining small positions and not taking on fresh positions, I did not lose perhaps so much money as other people were doing, or other firms were doing.  But it was a worrying time.  The Index I think hit 540 in 1972 or whatever it was at its peak and it was going down to I think 146, the low points.  Oh yes, I well remember them, very worrying times.  There were quiet periods as well, you might see the Index drop dramatically that day but you'd done very little business and if you're sitting there with various Bull positions they were worth less at the end of the day because you were going to adjust your prices accordingly.  

BA:  Were there many Jobbers who went out of the industry at that time?

GG:  Difficult to recall.  Yes, there were some.

BA:  Friends of yours?

GG:  Yes, even friends of mine, but of course in those days there were still a lot of partnerships and I think the partners, rather than see all of their capital disappear that they had built up over a long period of years, would try and merge perhaps with another company or would close the business rather than see them lose everything.  I don't think this would happen as quickly as you may well imagine.  I think these partners had a feeling 'well we have a tradition, and we have employees to look after'  It was a great family instinct, especially in the smaller firms.  But it did become inevitable that some firms did close.

BA:  Now we're going to leap forward again.  Do any of the privatisations figure in your Jobbing experience?  Were there any privatisation stocks that you dealt in?

GG:  Yes, we dealt as a company in the majority of the privatisations in the early days, apart from BP, because we didn't deal in oil stocks.  British Telecom I well remember.  What would happen because of the size of these issues, rather than the one or two dealers who may well be dealing in it once it had become established, initially for the first few days or weeks, you would have a much larger team dealing in these issues.  The reason I recall British Telecom is because I was interviewed for both BBC and ITV TV news on the floor of the Stock Exchange on the first day of dealings.  Yes I did assist in the dealings on both days in British Telecom and other issues - Cable and Wireless.

BA:  Did those stocks subsequently conform to the normal rules of supply and demand or did you find the size of bargains were any smaller because there were more smaller investors about now ?

GG:  As you say, everything conforms to supply and demand and obviously there was great demand for these stocks initially, and there was continued demand.  Various restrictions had been put on Americans or Japanese investors applying for them in the first place;  once these restrictions were lifted there was a demand for these [stocks].  I think they generally performed quite well.  There always was a lot of Labour Party outcry about the things being underpriced, but most of them were correctly priced to get the things away successfully in the first place. The fact that there were a lot of small holders, an army of new shareholders, didn't affect the marketability.   You might get fed up with buying 100 shares or 200 shares all day long from the small investors, but, the volumes and the quotation sizes were quite large and always maintained that all the way through.

BA:  Thinking about the late seventies, early eighties, now, as a Jobber on the floor of the House, did you feel any pressure on the Jobbing system?  Did you feel there was pressure for it to change?

GG:  There were a lot of complaints about us being under capitalised, more money was needed so institutions could deal larger.  I think this hand was slightly over-played, because [in] the nature of the system, we would not take undue risks if we thought there was going to be no reward at the end of it.  There's no point in us making a share price in quarter of a million, half a million or whatever if you know full well there are going to be buyers for those shares and there were going to be subsequently no sellers.  More capital would give you the wherewithal to take these bigger positions, but unless there's a future P & L or potential reward in it, it was a nonsense.  But there was pressure for firms to be more capitalised.

BA:  Did Bisgood Bishop try to react to that in any way?

GG:  I don't know about react in any way.  I think we had sufficient capital; you'll have to ask some of the other directors, but we always had sufficient capital to carry on.

BA:  Did you feel any pressure on the actual system of trading itself, of the separation between Jobber and Broker?  Were there any pressures on that to be broken down.

GG:  Well, of course in the run up to Big Bang this was all started back in the late seventies with the reference to the Monopolies Commission.  I think the pressures were more on the way we did business and the fact that

Tape 2 side 2

GG:  I think in the early eighties there was an increasing pressure from the institutions for lower commissions in the Gilt-Edged market particularly. At that time two leading Gilt-Edged firms of Jobbers, Akroyd and Wedd, were making enormous profits from Gilts.  The lower commissions, the brokers were obviously reluctant to introduce.  This, I think was one of the main reasons for Big Bang. But I didn't feel any particular pressure myself, and I think the ending of the single-capacity system perhaps was the wrong thing to do.  Certainly the advent of Big Bang, was wrong to do it all at once, it should have been done on a more piece-meal, bit by bit basis.  But I didn't feel any particular personal pressures, really, no.

BA:  Now that we've got to 1986, how would you contrast Bisgood Bishop at that time, mid-eighties, with the firm that you joined.

GG:  Someone told me once there were 200 firms of Jobbers in 1960.  I joined in '63 as you know.  By the mid-eighties the League was set up of five major firms of which we were the fifth.  There were two large ones and three medium sized firms.  And after the top five there were about ten other firms quite small.  So we obviously had grown into an established medium-sized firm.  

BA:  Were you a bigger firm, were there more staff, was there more equipment in the office?

GG:  Yes, there was more staff, more dealers, we covered a wider range of stocks.  I think the staff at one stage had been up to about 130, somewhere in that region.  I'm not sure of exact numbers.  But compared to a lot of firms we were still run - not on a shoestring - but there was increasing pressure on the smaller firms; some of them only had a handful of dealers on the floor, whereas we had a staff of 40 or 50 on the floor of the Stock Exchange.

BA:  How do you contrast the Stock Exchange itself in the mid-eighties to the Stock Exchange that you'd first walked into as a blue button in 1964?

GG:  It had changed a lot over the years and I don't think all the changes were for the better.  The institutions were finding it easier to deal.  Jobbers were finding it harder to make a living.  One thing I must say, job satisfaction had deteriorated enormously.  It was not the same place to work. A lot of the standards, a lot of the etiquette, had disappeared over the years, which was sad, but perhaps inevitable.

BA:  What do you mean by that?

GG:  Well, progress is two ways.  To get to the stage where more business was being transacted, the pressures had broken down barriers and a lot of the day-to-day [practices], the gentlemen dealing with each other - a lot of the practices had gone by the wayside.

BA:  What would you say had been the strengths of the Jobbing system?

GG:  Under single capacity, I think the strength of the Jobbing system was the number of firms in opposition to each other; you're all prepared to go to your particular limits to provide a market in the shares in which you were dealing, which served the purpose at that time.  I think it was a very good system.

BA: Would you say it had any weaknesses?

GG:  Yes, it must have had its weaknesses.  People may well feel now that some of the methods employed to make profits were wrong, although I would perhaps argue against that.  I don't know what its weaknesses were, really.  I think the way the system was changing.  The weakness was the breakdown in the standards of dealing and behaviour, particularly by the Brokers.  The ethics had changed to the extent where a firm which was known as The Market in the particular stock or sector, wasn't necessarily seeing the business that it should have done by right, because broker-dealers were dealing with their friends round the corner perhaps, giving them the business that they shouldn't by rights have been seeing, and this led to a general deterioration of the system.

BA:  Without necessarily going into names, are there any particular experiences or cases that you can recall, either when you felt that you'd lost out as a firm or it had become known to you?

GG:  Definitely yes.  You would know which broker-dealers were friends with which particular Jobber, oppositions you had, but there was nothing you could do about it.  You could row, having tried to draw the business to yourself by your commercial quotation or whatever.  If you lost out you could have a moan at the broker.  He would say, 'well I went to him first, or he was more commercial than you.'  You had no way of proving or disproving what he was saying.  You just had to accept it.  And this gradually increased I think in later years. I think this was basically the standard of the dealers that brokers, or even jobbers were employing in latter times.

BA:  What would you say in your experience were the qualities needed to be a Jobber?

GG:  Tough, good head for figures, good to work under pressure, ability to communicate easily and get on well with people, a lot of general knowledge and a good feeling for things, an acute awareness of surroundings and what's going on.  Patience ...

BA:  What kind of situations would you require patience?

GG:  If you had a particular position, you may well be a Bear and you know full well that it would be right to be a Bear because you have a feeling that there's some bad news coming or the share price had gone unsustainably high. You had to be patient to keep that position open over perhaps a long period of time, and not be tempted to close it for a minimal profit, you know you'll get a rather larger profit if you ran that position for a much longer period; but there's always the temptation to lock in a profit and start again.  It's above all, a general hungriness and a need to make money and succeed in what you are doing.

BA:  Did you see it as making money for the firm, or making money for yourself, or were they both inextricably bound up?

GG:  No they weren't inextricably bound up.  I always felt that I was making money for the firm and if you did well then the firm would look after you at the end of the day.  That was my belief.  I mean if you felt you were just making money for yourself, 'oh yes, that's going to benefit my commission at the end of the year' I think you had the wrong approach.

BA:  How did you feel about your career as a Jobber up to 86?

GG:  It had been a successful one.  It had been a worthwhile one for me financially, although I didn't particularly like the way the Stock Exchange was going, I think the majority of the Members were against the proposals that came from the Parkinson-Goodison Pact for Big Bang, but we had little alternative.  It obviously had been decided not to go to Court or to try and keep the thing out of the Courts and the only way we could do that was to accept what Goodison had cooked up.  I just didn't like the way things were going but you had to bow to the inevitable.  One thing you had to be as a jobber, you had to be flexible and adaptable and go with change.  You couldn't resist change. You might not like it but you had to go with it.

BA:  Any memories of the last days trading on the floor of the House?

GG:  Well we as a firm stayed on the floor after Big Bang for a while, but it was sad. It was becoming a bit like a ghost town.  The Stock Exchange in its wisdom had spent a lot of money putting up a lot of screens which people were only using for a short period of time or some were not used at all.  It was becoming a bit like a ghost town quite sad really.

BA:  Well it's a rather low note to finish on but I think we'll finish at that point.  Thank you very much.