Recent coverage (Report, January 18) of the merging of Panmure Gordon and Liberum left me asking: “How are corporate brokers relevant in 2024?”
They were very much a feature of the City prior to Big Bang when stockbrokers worked alongside merchant banks assisting companies on capital raising, rights issues or floating themselves on the stock exchange.
Fast forward some 40 years and all this surely is today handled “in house” by the likes of Barclays, HSBC or Goldman Sachs. Combining all client contacts with balance sheet. There’s no equivalent of a corporate broker on Wall Street. And even Cazenove, the long-standing blue blood of corporate brokers, threw in the towel and sold out to JPMorgan Chase in 2010.
With the ever-shrinking number of UK companies raising capital on the London Stock Exchange am I missing something?
Tony Smith
Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, UK
