City and
Charging for gilts.
The field for the City's newest classic, the Great Gilt-Edged Handicap, threatens to swamp the course. Anxiously the stewards confer with the starter. What should they do? Raise the weights, and ballot out those at the bottom of the handicap? Raise the fences, and try to frighten the sketchier jumpers away? Dis- qualify some foreign entries, until such time as their home tracks are fairly opened to British contenders? Or just let them all come charging across the Melling Road — assuming that when the leaders clear 13echers, enough runners and riders will be on the floor to give the survivors room enough to get round? Because the race is new, no one wants to be left out. It replaces the market in British Government stock as it has existed■ for two or three centuries. Farewell brokers and jobbers: Farewell, even, to the Government broker, commissioned by William Pitt in 1786 to reduce the National Debt — hasn't he done well? Enter, instead, the market- makers — firms which will undertake to ha), and sell Government stock in good times and bad, and in turn will have the privileges now granted to the gilt-edged Jobbers. But how many makers make a Market? Two jobbers now handle four- fifths of the business. In the United States there are 37 'primary dealers' making markets in Treasury stock. That suggests to City minds that 18 market-makers, or two dozen at the most, would be plenty. Tot up the probable entries, though. They look roughly like the Big Four banks (directly, or through subsidiaries), plus seven accept- ing houses, three discount houses, two financial conglomerates, two British over- seas banks, about four US commercial banks and three investment banks. Add to that the Germans, and the French, and the Swiss (now busily piling their francs into brokers Phillips & Drew), and the Scands, and the Japanese. . . . It looks like a cavalry charge. How can they all make money? Of those who do, .how many will 19e making it out of those who don't?
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