‘Big Bang’ in 1986 signalled the end of the historic jobbing system of the London Stock Exchange. Jobbers were market-makers who acted as intermediaries between stockbrokers on the floor of the exchange. With few records left of their activities, this collection of forty-two interviews – predominantly with former jobbers but augmented by those from the point of view of brokers and financial journalists – undertaken by the Centre for Metropolitan History in 1990, represents a rare resource for the history of this distinctive part of the financial life of the City. Topics covered include: the type of people who became jobbers; the qualities needed to practise successfully; jobbers’ career patterns; the mechanics of the jobbing system; the rationale of the system; the opportunities and risks involved; the character of the difference markets; the character of the different firms; the contraction in the number of firms; relations between large and small firms; relations with brokers; jobbers as a source of market intelligence; and the background, from a jobbing point of view, to ‘Big Bang’.
The tapes and transcripts of the interviews were originally deposited at the British Library Sound Archive (ref no. C463) for permanent archiving but for the first time they are now available online via the University of London School of Advanced Study’s e-repository, SAS-Space. To access the collection visit http://www.history.ac.uk/projects/jobbing.