Diamond Jubilee Special: The four FTSE 100 stocks trading for 60yrs

DIAMOND JUBILEE

As the Queen celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, Richard Cumming-Bruce, senior investment researcher at Principal Investment Management, examines how Britain's financial markets have changed over the past 60 years.

In the plethora of recent reviews of how Britain has changed since the Queen came to the throne, few have focused on the fact almost no part of British life has changed as radically as its financial markets over the past 60 years. In 1952, and indeed for decades thereafter, the stock exchange (SE) in London remained an insular and narrow institution, which did not even embrace women, let alone foreigners.  Stockbrokers’ partnerships were strictly separated from the ‘jobbers’ who traded stocks; banks were emphatically prohibited from owning either; and minimum commission levels on deal...