First published in 1987, this is a reissue of the first book to offer a detailed comparison of two of the foremost stock exchanges in world before 1914. It is not only an exercise in comparative economic history but it also relates these institutions to wider world markets, thereby clarifying their functions and how they related to the general financial and economic framework. Students and researchers in economic and social history will welcome the reissue of this groundbreaking account of two historically important institutions in a crucial period of their development. Financial practitioners and others will also find much of interest here, in terms of both fascinating history and of insights into an era when a global market was rapidly evolving largely free of the twentieth-century distortions and hindrances introduced by wars, interventionist governments and exchange controls.

This book examines funding platforms for impact investing known as social stock exchanges (SSE) and ways to approach impact investing at regulated traditional exchanges. The book analyses the antecedents and prerequisites for the successful implementation of SSEs. It presents the creation of SSEs as a necessary step towards a more democratic and popular impact investing market, and a way to align the asset search process for investors with capital access for entrepreneurs. It also analyses the installation of impact investing at traditional stock exchanges drawing from Green Bonds and Social Bonds. The book showcases successful financial structuring, integrating impact into existing financial products. It discusses standalone impact solutions, the status quo of impact investing, social entrepreneurship and the pros and cons of platforms versus the use of traditional stock exchanges for impact investing. It highlights aspects of adjusted portfolio and product structuring, innovation in the context of listing criteria and makes proposals for impact stock listings at platforms and traditional stock exchanges.

In 2001, the London Stock Exchange will be 200 years old, though its origins go back a century before that. This book traces the history of the London Stock Exchange from its beginnings around 1700 to the present day, chronicling the challenges and opportunities it has faced, avoided, or exploited over the years. Throughout, the history seeks to blend an understanding of the London Stock Exchange as an institution with that of the securities market of which it was - and is - such an important component. One cannot be examined satisfactorily without the other. Without a knowledge of both, for example, the causes of the 'Big Bang' of 1986 would forever remain a mystery. However, the history of the London Stock Exchange is not just worthy of study for what it reveals about the interaction between institution and market. Such was the importance of the London Stock Exchange that its rise to world dominance before 1914, its decline thereafter, and its renaissance from the mid-1980s, explain a great deal about Britain's own economic performance and the working of the international economy. For the first time a British economic institution of foremost importance is studied throughout its entire history, with regard to the roles played and the constraints under which it operated, and the results evaluated against the background of world economic progress.

An in-depth history of how finance remade everyday life in Thatcher's Britain. Are We Rich Yet? tells the story of the financialization of British society. During the 1980s and 1990s, financial markets became part of daily life for many Britons as the practice of investing moved away from the offices of the City of London, onto Britain’s high streets, and into people’s homes. The Conservative Party claimed this shift as evidence that capital ownership was in the process of being democratized. In practice, investing became more institutionalized than ever in late-twentieth-century Britain: inclusion frequently meant tying one’s fortunes to the credit, insurance, pension, and mortgage industries to maintain independence from state-run support systems. In tracing the rise of a consumer-oriented mass investment culture, historian Amy Edwards explains how the "financial" became such a central part of British society, not only economically and politically, but socially and culturally, too. She shifts our focus away from the corridors of Whitehall and towards a cast of characters that included brokers, bankers and traders, newspaper editors, goods manufacturers, marketing departments, production companies, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women. Between them, they shaped the terrain upon which political and economic reform occurred. Grappling with the interactions between structural transformation and the rhythms of everyday life, Are We Rich Yet? thus understands the rise of neoliberalism as something other than the inevitable outcome of a carefully orchestrated right-wing political revolution.