A call for Sir Nicholas Goodison to save the Stock Exchange for the nation

We need a fund for the preservation of financial monuments. Sir Nicholas Goodison — successively chairman of the Stock Exchange, the TSB and the National Art Collections Fund — would be just the man to head it. My fund would have saved Cazenove for the nation, and could now get a second chance with a monument familiar to Sir Nicholas: the Stock Exchange itself. As can happen with works of art, it has been given a stay of execution. The two foreign collectors who have cast covetous eyes on it — Euronext in Paris and Deutsche Börse in Frankfurt — are being held off by the Competition Commission. All that plumbing at the back of the Exchange, the pipes that carry the stocks and the money for clearing and settlement, would need to be sorted out, the Commission says, before either of them would be allowed to bid for it. Now all that our fund needs to do is to rustle up the money — say, £1 billion — and we could bid for it ourselves. The Heritage Lottery Fund would be anxious to help us, and even the Treasury might unbuckle. Our trouble would be to show that this monument is still part of our financial heritage.

Keeping the silver

It is certainly not what it was when Sir Nicholas first took command there. In those days it was a members’ club with a monopoly. To exchange stocks, brokers and jobbers had to meet each other on its floor. Today the Exchange is a limited company whose shares are widely held and, rather oddly, quoted on itself, and it has to compete for its living. Many deals never go near the Exchange. Investment banks may find it simpler and quicker to deal with each other. Investors may see the charms of derivative contracts whose value is linked to the price of a share or to an index of the market.