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The early part of the twenty-first century has witnessed a sea-change in regulation of the financial system following the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Prior to that financial crisis, the official policy was directed to deregulating the financial system, whereas after 2008 the move is towards increased regulation. This book begins the study of the UK financial system with an introduction to the role of a financial system in an economy, and a very simple model of an economy. In this model the economy is divided into two distinct groups or sectors. The first is the household sector and the second is the firms sector. The book describes the process of financial intermediation, and in doing so, it examines the arguments as to why we need financial institutions. It highlights the nature of financial intermediation, and examines the various roles of financial intermediaries: banks as transformers, undertaking of transformation process, and providers of liquidity insurance. The nature of banking, the operations carried out by banks, and the categories of banking operations are discussed next. The book also examines the investment institutions and other investment vehicles. It examines the role of central banks in the financial system in principle, particularly, the role of the Bank of England. Primary market for equity issues, secondary market, the global stock market crash of October 1987 and efficient markets hypothesis are also covered. The book also looks at the trading of financial derivatives, risk management, bank regulation, and the regulation of life insurance companies, pension funds.
development of an economy the household unit would have undertaken production of any goods consumed. As economies have developed, a form of specialisation has generally taken place so that the proximate ownership and control of much of the productive resources of the economy, such as land, buildings and machinery, have been vested in units making up the second sector, which we call the firms sector. We will
allowed for a transnational life beyond the ‘container’ of the nation state. Our interviews very much illustrated how the right to free movement transformed the migration experience. As ‘free movers’, Polish migrants no longer required a work or residence permit. This afforded them considerable opportunities and choices to construct their own worklife pathways. Indeed, for some the work experience became ‘boundaryless’ in that employment was not confined to a single firm, sector or, indeed, nation state. Importantly, Ireland’s goldrush labour market did not only provide
-sized firms sector, which did not engage in long production runs of standardised goods. As Herman Schwartz has noted colourfully, ‘Denmark entered the 1980s on a fast train to macro-economic hell, albeit it in the first class coach’ (Schwartz 2001: 136). In Sweden from the early 1980s, the export-oriented employers in the engineering sector pressed for more devolved forms of wage-bargaining (Kunkel and Pontusson 1998: 3). Anti-corporatist attitudes also hardened among strategic (middle-level) decision-takers in the central employers’ organisation, Svenska
every five years; unions lose immunity unless a secret ballot is conducted and won before strike action. • 1988 Employment Act Post-entry closed shop is made illegal and unenforceable; no strike seeking to enforce post-entry closed shop is lawful. During a lawful strike, union members who cross the picket-line cannot be disciplined. Extension of secret balloting in union elections. • • • 1989 Employment Act Various provisions which extend labour market regulation to the small firm sector are withdrawn; repeal of discriminatory provisions restricting hours of work