The Jobbing System of the London Stock Exchange: An Oral History
Ref.No.: 41	Playback No.:

Interviewee's surname: Carpenter	Title: Mr
Interviewee's forenames: Edward Brian
Date of birth:  29 July 1926	Sex: Male

Date(s) of recording: 17 October 1990
Location of interview: Home
Name of interviewer: Bernard Attard
Type of recorder: Marantz CP 430
Total no. of tapes:     2    Speed:
Type of tape:  TDK AR 60     Noise reduction:  DBX
Mono or stereo: stereo       Original or copy: Copy
Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: CMH; no restrictions

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

Tape 1, Side 1

Birth in Button in 1926; father an import/export merchant; grandparents; twin brother a leaf buyer with Gallahers; education at Epsom College; service in the Navy; learns French for six months in Brussels; becomes a trainee manager with Unilever and involved in the ground nut scheme; gets a motor engineering degree and becomes an assistant at a garage; through a cousin obtains an introduction to the senior partner of the jobbing firm, C. Douglas Clark; joins Clark in 1957; brief description of career with Clark; memories of closure of the firm in 1966; Wedd Durlacher closes Clark's positions; reaction to closure; Brian Carpenter joins James Case,which at the time is halfbook with Akroyd, with which it merges; in 1970 invited by Hugh Merriman to become a partner; Clark a firm of limited capital, jobbing in rubber, food, industrial and fixed interest stocks; description of the firm's offices; first jobs learning the settlement system; settlement system is efficient; description of the partners in the firm; little contact with companies in whose stocks the firm traded; firm not taking big positions; becomes a blue button; difficulty of hearing the partners because of the noise; duties as a blue button; went into the Stock Exchange to make money; leaves Clark owing money; becomes authorised and works on food book; difficulties when did a spell on the rubber book; contrast between rubber market and food market; market sense and how you acquired it; influenced by Keith Knowles, a dealer with Clark who eventually becomes very successful with a discount house; early difficulty as an authorised clerk; description of early dealing experience with a broker who was involved in the manipulation of the share price of Tesco and who took advantage of him; refusal to deal with him again; definition of the term 'virgin' in the context of Stock Exchange dealing.

Tape 1, side 2

Extent of price manipulation of stocks; parcelling out shares to friends; insider information; trading on personal account; description of the way in which a jobber would trade off his own book; main jobbing opponents; competitiveness of market; recollections of occasions when he 'challenged' other jobbers; the way you found out what prices your opposition were making; size in which prices were made; importance of staying within financial limits; joint books with James Case; difficulties caused by lack of capital; example of broker rigging a market to take advantage of Capital Gains Tax regulations; partnership in Clark and the capital he put into the firm; approach to running a book; lesson learnt when running a book on horses at Unilever; firm starts to experience difficulties in 1964; difficulty of competing against larger firms; consciousness of the decline in the number of jobbing firms; advantage of being a one-man firm; Clark attempts to find a firm with which to merge/reaction to the closure of the firm; description of James Case; experience of changing firms; description of a typical day; directions from senior partners; busy periods of the day in the market; contacts with fund managers, who rang him up on the pitch; runs the leader books; jobbers who ran the leader book with other firms; the nature of the relationship with fund managers; brokers asked jobbers for information about stocks; Chapman & Rowe, which gets hammered, after overspeculating.

Tape 2, side 1

Chapman & Rowe speculating in a stock called Spillers; description of jobbing lead stocks; description of the joint book between Case and Akroyd; contrast between Case and Akroyd; organisation of the merged firm; elimination of the dross in the firm; description of Hugh Merriman; jobbers recruited by Merriman; Akroyd over takes Wedd; has greater freedom jobbing with Akroyd; various books Brian Carpenter jobbed on; becomes involved in recruitment of blue buttons and describes his approach; management of Akroyd and organisation on the floor of the House; pressures on jobbers to deal in large size; jobbing system still competitive despite the decline in the number of firms; problems associated with taking large positions; spread agreements; put throughs; example of put through that went wrong; example of the abuse of a put though in an unmarketable stock; split orders; the way a jobber protected himself; necessity of getting on with brokers; underwriting.

Tape 2, side 2

Underwriting; Akroyd involved in the first 'dawn raid' and the controversy caused; role of jobber in a takeover and the definition of a 'cross book'; co-operation between the jobbers and the back office; the development of a market outside the Stock Exchange; Ariel; the 1974 recession; jobbing in a falling market; no strains in the jobbing system during the 1970s; inevitability of Big Bang; retirement from active trading 1983/4; supervises traders on floor of the Stock Exchange after Big Bang/increase of pressure in Stock Exchange even after 1974 recession; qualities required to be a successful jobber; outstanding jobbers: Brian Peppiatt, Michael Sargent, Ken Pitcher; small jobbing firms: Harold Rattle, C.T. Pulley; relationship of large and small firms in the gilt market; jobbing system remains competitive; weakness of the jobbing system was the lack of size of firms; satisfaction with jobbing career.