Lucy Newton

Female investors in the first english and Welsh commercial joint-stock banks

Abstract The 1826 Banking Act was passed to strengthen the banking sector. It allowed the establishment of joint-stock banks in England and Wales outside a 65-mile radius of Charing Cross, London. Institutions formed under this legislation could have an unrestricted number of partners but they did not enjoy the privilege of limited liability. This article examines the extent of female investors in joint-stock banks formed under the 1826 Act. Analysis of shareholdings found that female investors were in a minority yet their holdings in aggregate increased over time. They were primarily widows and spinsters, who collectively became significant in the emerging national financial securities market.

Advertising, promotion, and the rise of a national building society movement in interwar Britain

This article examines the role of advertisement and promotion in the successful development of nationwide building societies in interwar Britain and the rapid overall growth of the building society movement. Major building societies are shown to have used extensive advertising to compensate for their initial lack of established national brands, promote home-ownership, and make savers aware of the attractive earnings and high security of building society savings. During a period when most building societies had very limited branch networks, extensive advertising increased the public profile of the major societies and thus assisted their rapid expansion via lower-cost modes such as agency networks.

Virtuous banking: the role of the community in monitoring English joint-stock banks and their managements in the nineteenth century

This chapter explores the activity of English joint-stock banks, as a precursor to the modern corporation, in the provision of credit in the first half of the nineteenth century. It employs new archival data from bank archives to show that while these firms did not have full corporate attributes, they exhibited new governance and managerial structures. It finds that the changes in organisational form did not result in a new revolutionary way to assess loan applicants. The decision to lend remained based upon informal information gathering through commercial networks as well as upon subjective measures, such as the personality or character of the applicant.

How far does the apple fall from the tree? The size of English bank branch networks in the nineteenth century

Abstract After the Bank Charter Act in 1833, English banks could branch nationally without legal or geographical restriction. It has been previously thought that despite this freedom, early English joint-stock banks predominantly began as single units. Drawing upon a new data set, this article maps the growth of branch banking, the size of bank networks and their geographical location and spread. It demonstrates that banks pursued branching strategies energetically against the intentions of regulators and were successful in forming large and complex networks. However, ultimately, before 1880 the majority settled for local, district and multi-regional structures, as opposed to national structures.

Formalising Credit Markets? The Entrance of English Joint-Stock Banks

Barnes and Newton explore the activity of English joint-stock banks, as a precursor to the modern corporation, in the provision of credit in the first half of the nineteenth century. They employ new archival data from bank archives to show that while these firms did not have full corporate attributes, they exhibited new governance and managerial structures. The authors find that the changes in organisational form did not result in a new revolutionary way to assess loan applicants. The decision to lend remained based upon informal information gathering through commercial networks as well as upon subjective measures, such as the personality or character of the applicant.

Visualizing Organizational Identity: The History of a Capitalist Enterprise

Abstract This article examines the context in which firms reflect on their own history in order to help form their organizational identity. By undertaking research in business archives, it shows that external change is as important as an internal transition in understanding shifts in the way an organization understands its past. We trace the messages communicated internally through paintings of past chairmen and senior staff when they were displayed inside the head office of Lloyds Bank during the 1960s and 1970s. These portraits generated interest and were an effective means of non-verbal communication which provoked a discussion about the purpose, values and norms in the firm’s past, present, and future. The objects retold the story of the bank’s success as a privately owned family firm in the midst of on-going political debates inside the Labour party about the nationalization of large banking companies. With the portraits in place, they recognized the bank’s history as a capitalist enterprise. The pictures legitimized the tradition of private ownership, helped to form organizational identity, and set future obligations that would see its continuation in what was a period of potential change.