ABSTRACT
The number of industrial, commercial and financial companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange in 1853 was just over two hundred with a nominal capital of £125 million. 1 By the outbreak of the first world war the number had increased to many thousands with a huge nominal capital of £1,500 million. Unfortunately it is not possible to quantify the development of the home industrial share market of the provincial stock exchanges in the same way but some indication of the changes for the period can be given. At the height of the 1845 railway boom most of the larger exchanges carried quotations in a miscellaneous range of purely local companies numbering well over a hundred, but relative to London companies their capital would have been much smaller. Following the passing of the joint stock acts of 1844, 1855, 1856 and the 1862 codifying act incorporated companies increased greatly in number, a development reflected in the share lists of the provincial markets. Acceptance by investors of shares in these companies depended upon, among other things, a market and a stock exchange quotation. The value of a limited liability share was largely based on its marketability, while a local quotation provided shareholders with the security and comfort they desired. The growth of company promotions in the eighteen seventies and eighties brought increased pressures for market facilities and in the case of ‘home’ industrials this was largely met by the provinces. Phillips’ Investors Manual of 1885, one of the many of its kind, was of the opinion “that the provincial exchanges were of almost greater importance in relation to home securities than London.” 2 This claim could not be equally asserted after the turn of the century, but as each major industry was converted onto a joint stock footing the local stock exchanges developed their own particular speciality so that by 1914, while they did not possess the vast range of the London markets, the main provincial centres dealt in a special range of shares with quotations dependant mainly on local information as to industrial conditions, “they do not vary, as gilt-edged securities and debentures do, with monetary and political conditions, nor do they take their tone from London”. 3
