King Caz: Cazenove, Thatcherism, and the 1980s financial revolution.

Abstract

This article shows how elite stockbrokers Cazenove and Co. responded to the 'Big Bang' deregulation of the financial sector in 1986, using social networks and inherited practices to navigate an ostensibly technical and modernizing revolution. The Thatcher administration's reform of the London Stock Exchange was an economic enterprise intended to end restrictive practices and open the City to competition. A more open meritocratic financial sector marked the 'death of gentlemanly capitalism' and coalesced with a political agenda for entrepreneurialism and popular capitalism. Yet this case study shows how Cazenove's culture drove its strategy, that privilege and hierarchy were sustained by influential cross-sector networks, and that there was resistance to change, even though technological change and new financial instruments were embraced as part of a strategy which mixed innovation with tradition. Essentially, elite networks persisted in the 1980s deregulated economy, as established relationships were used to optimum effect and became more important after Big Bang. A more mutually supportive relationship between finance and industry than has hitherto been imagined is also demonstrated. By showing how a modernizing revolution was navigated using social networks and traditions, this article restores the role of culture to financial history. It also contributes to a body of work in twentieth-century British history which challenges the perception that neoliberal ideas were consistently applied under Thatcherism and complicates the notion of a coherent Thatcherite project.