Gosling's Grouse: why financial services should celebrate Thatcher's legacy

GOSLING'S GROUSE

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Well, ultimately, she is the prime minister that brought us the ‘Big Bang' or de-regulation of the City of London that abolished the old school City ways and replaced them with the new.

Big Bang was enshrined in the Financial Services Act of 1988, which came into force in April 1989, in what was to be the first of many ‘A-days' over the next 25 years. In those days, advisers might have been part of Nasdim (not a US stockmarket index but a regulator) and the regulators to be reckoned with were SIB and Lautro. Instead of RDR, we all discussed de-polarisation, the end of the MCA while MIPs were one of the easiest and probably most effective investment products ever sold. It is doubtful Mrs Thatcher was ever intimately knowledgeable about many or any of these terms, b...

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