Goodbye, cosy world. (the coming deregulation of the London financial markets and the market for British gilts) (Big Bang supplement to Euromoney magazine)

Goodbye, cosy world Big Bang’s impact on that most hallowed of City institutions — British gilts — is set to be as dramatic as on any of London’s financial markets. To a market dominated by two jobbing firms and in which deals are still handwritten into the jobbers’ ledgers and prices altered by pencil, the new rules to be introduced on October 27 will totally transform this cosiest of worlds.

On that day, the traditional practice of single capacity dealing by jobbers and brokers will vanish and be replaced by a system in which both functions are merged into what is known as the dual capacity method.