The institutional investors

The growth of institutional investors during the 1960s and 1970s has dramatically changed the face of the City. It has been the outward and visible sign of a revolution in the way savings are now channelled into financial securities. This is a revolution which is not confined to the United Kingdom. In every major industrial country there has been a tendency for individual shareholders to decline relative to institutional shareholders. But the decline has gone further in Britain than anywhere else, including the United States and Germany. As a result, all financial centres have seen the growth of a new centre of power, a new barony. But nowhere else has financial investment power become so concentrated in the hands of a very small number of institutions and individuals as in the City of London. Not surprisingly, this concentration of power has acquired political as well as economic significance.