I’m sick of hearing about the `stability of the City of London`.
Let’s start defining our own policy on devolution – opening up the regions to devolution (including having local stock exchanges for smaller companies?) People in the North are sick to the back teeth of talking about what we can do to keep feeding London – they want to hear how there can be a level playing field so as to increase wealth in the regions.
Liberal Revolution 
Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Belfast, Dublin, Birmingham and Bristol all used to have their own stock exchange trading floors (I worked on Glasgow’s in 1987, Birmingam’s in 1988 and consulted for a firm on Liverpool’s in c. 1992). You’ll tend to find that for smaller regional listed companies their brokers will in fact tend to be ones based in the regional city anyway, though mergers amongst stock exchange firms have obscured the regional origins of many member firms.
But on your overall point – I agree, and recommend Fred Harrison’s “Ricardo’s Law” to see why there is a problem and what can be done about it! There’s also an article here that he wrote to publicise the book in the Yorkshire Post, entitled “Why is the north filling the pockets of pampered Londoners?”
By: Jock on February 18, 2008
at 1:31 pm