The Role of the Capital Market and the Purposes which it Serves

Abstract

A market provides a focus for the activities of buyers and sellers of a particular commodity or service. In the course of the dealings the price or series of prices is settled. The participants in the U.K. capital market include businessmen, central and local government, financial intermediaries such as insurance companies and pension funds, and private investors. The capital market has no confined location: it is in progress all over the land, wherever suppliers and users of capital get together to do business. Much business is transacted over the telephone, so that there need be no geographical site at all for certain activities. However, parts of the market are concentrated in certain well-known centres, the most renowned of these being the Stock Exchange at Throgmorton Street which deals in company securities and those issued by governments and local authorities.