The Regulation and Advantages of the City

It is an honour for me to address such a distinguished audience. To speak in Bombay on securities is a rash enterprise. With a Stock Exchange over one hundred years old, now I understand linked electronically with the other major Indian Stock Exchanges, and several thousand quoted shares, I am sure that there are those in the audience who know more about certain parts of my subject than I do. I am not a budliwalla or even a taravniwalla. As long ago as 1899 one of my fellow countrymen declared that ‘India being the original home of options, a native broker would give a few points to the brokers of other nations in the manipulation of puts and calls’. Luckily the same man declared that ‘a Bombay native broker is a very useful member of society whose virtues are not sufficiently recognised.... With rare exceptions he is honest to the backbone and pays up for his own misfortunes or the defaults of his customers to the last pie’. Well, you may say, what has the British Invisible Exports Council to add to that?