The Big Bang

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the 1986 Big Bang liberalization of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), which was crucial in transforming the City of London into a truly global financial centre. This policy was the result of a winding institutional process that began in 1979 when the RPC initiated a case against the LSE for non-competitive practices. While Thatcher initially refused to exempt the LSE from this case, things changed following the government’s implementation of its monetarist experiment: MTFS. MTFS was a strategy to discipline the British economy in a depoliticized manner, by locking the government into years of financial stringency. In order for this strategy to be successful, the government had to meet certain monetary targets, which would justify the painful measures. Yet this plan went awry, plunging the economy into a deep recession while the government failed to hit its monetary targets. To prevent the complete presentational collapse of MTFS, the state began to make massive sales of government debt on the LSE as a way to meet the monetary targets. This in turn made it crucially important that the normal functioning of the LSE was not disrupted by a drawn-out court case. The Thatcher government finally decided to exempt the LSE from this investigation in 1983, which began the countdown to the 1986 Big Bang liberalization. The decision that led to the Big Bang was thus, to a significant extent, a desperate attempt to protect MTFS, which had sought to restructure the British economy in line with global competitive pressures.