We can’t make sense of contemporary stock exchanges without understanding the huge changes that swept through finance in the 1980s. This episode explores those upheavals at the level of states and markets, and the of lived reality of Britain’s markets: the collapse of Bretton Woods, the Iron Lady’s reforms, striking miners and a new kind of investor called Sid. This really was the decade when greed became good.

Transcript

Under the great dome of the Old House, close to the edge of the floor: here you would have found the post-war boom in the shares of dog-tracks, and here you would have found a remarkably tall man, one Sidney Jenkins, sometimes known as ‘King of the Dogs’, reputable dealer in all shares leisure-related. On 1 April, 1960 – April’s Fools day – Sidney Jenkins and his son Anthony formed S Jenkins & Son Ltd. Sidney’s son John started work as junior in the early 1960s.  It was, says Anthony, ‘a family firm and everybody knew one another.  We knew when people had families and passed their driving tests, and they were good days.’

The firm specialized in leisure stocks, dog tracks and the holiday camps – Butlins and Pontins – that boomed in the days before cheap air travel opened up the Costas. This was often described as the ‘spivvy’ end of the market, but it lacked the defining characteristic of spivviness – financial sharp practice. Sidney Jenkins may have been ‘King of the Dogs’ but his firm was conservatively run. It had a good reputation and deep personal connections to the directors of the businesses whose stocks they traded. Jenkins had a horror of overtrading and the ‘hammerings’, when gavels wielded by the Exchange’s top hatted waiters sounded the end of a firm and the confiscation of a partner’s assets. Jenkins eschewed excessive risk wherever possible. The firm never borrowed money or stock: ‘Father’s attitude was “I like to sleep at night,”’ says Anthony. ‘We earned a good living out of the business and the staff all did well, and Father’s attitude was “Why should I over-trade?” That was something that he was always frightened of.  You’ve got to remember also father saw a lot of hammerings, a lot firms went broke in his time.’

People remember the Jenkins family for two things: for being tall, and for being decent. One former broker’s boy remembers going down to the floor on his first day unaccompanied – an unusual occurrence – and looking helplessly at the crowd: ‘I was sort of wandering around, a little bit lost, and a very tall man bent down and said, ‘Your first day, sonny?’ and I said, ‘Yes sir’. He said, ‘How can I help?’ and I told him, and I showed him the list of prices I’d been obliged to collect. That man was Sid Jenkins.’

The family were generous to a fault: ‘If you had a charity that you wanted to raise something for’, said another broker, ‘they’d often put a bucket in the middle of the floor on a Friday afternoon and fill it up, or make people fill it up.’ In all, they had a good name, and on the floor of the old Stock Exchange that mattered.[1]

I tell you this anecdote for two reasons. First, John Jenkins is a name we will hear again in coming episodes, because he actually did build a stock exchange. And second, it just captures the state of finance at the onset of the nineteen eighties – a bit threadbare, small-time, parochial. Careful – the kind of world that tidied the books every night and slept soundly on the takings, however meagre. Sid Jenkins died in 1981, and Anthony briefly became senior partner. A year later John became senior partner. That’s in 1982, when S Jenkins & Son was still the smallest firm of jobbers on the Exchange. In 1984 this same firm made a million pounds in a few minutes of trading. In 1986 it sold out to investment bank Guinness Mahon and thence to Japanese Giant Nomura. In 1987, the firm – now a trading desk in a global bank – lost £10 million in a day’s trading and clawed ...