The ‘80’s were the halcyon years for the City, triggered by the abolition of exchange controls in 1979, followed up in 1986 by ‘Big Bang’, which saw international investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and UBS rub shoulders and then usurp many of the grand old merchant banks of the day such as SG Warburg, Morgan Grenfell, Schroders, Samuel Montagu and Barclays Capital. The introduction of the LIFFE futures market in 1984 and the explosion of derivative trading triggered the expansion of capital markets and a tsunami of IPOS and privatisations.
