ABSTRACT
Every stockbroker will assure you that the London Stock Exchange exists to serve the country.* To anyone who reads daily in the newspapers of takeover battles, daring coups by young financiers and gyrating share prices, this assurance might sound unconvincing. And to anyone who suspects that top jobbers in a good year are the best-paid men in the City simply because they possess a superior gambling instinct, it might sound positively outrageous. But in a sense, the stockbroking community is right. The Stock Exchange does exist for the mundane purpose of channelling personal savings into industrial and commercial investment and of providing a market-place for trading company shares. The criterion on which it should be judged is how well it performs these tasks.
