Royal Exchange (London)

Second Exchange Building in 1751

Exchange building after the reconstruction of 2001-2003.

The Royal Exchange is the first commodity exchange in England that existed in the City of London from 1565 to 1923. In 1698, the London Stock Exchange spun off from it, which continues to operate to this day.

The first exchange in England was founded in 1565 by Sir Thomas Gresham . The construction site itself was provided by the corporation of the city of London and the Pious Guild of Merchants . The prototype was the stock exchange in Antwerp , where Gresh lived and worked. The founder paid all the costs of building the London Stock Exchange from his own pocket. Queen Elizabeth I attended the opening ceremony on January 23, 1571. The British adopted the best practices of Flemish trade and, after the ruin of Antwerp during the Eighty Years War, tried to rob him of his status of the financial center of northern Europe.

The Royal Exchange in London remained commodity for more than a hundred years, only in 1695 transactions with government securities and company shares began to be carried out on it. The noisiness inherent in brokers did not appeal to the stiff management of the exchange, for this reason in 1698 brokers working with securities were denied access to the Royal Exchange, their meeting place was the coffee shop “ At Jonathan ”, in which anyone could go. Together with brokers, intermediaries called jobbers worked , they made transactions at their own expense and earned on the difference between the purchase and sale prices. Since the beginning of the 18th century, coffee days have regularly held meeting days for mutual settlements, this practice has led to the simplification and intensification of trade. Later days of meetings receive the English name “ clearing ”, and in 1775 a clearing house will appear at the Stock Exchange. Among the tables “At Jonathan” the most famous words of the exchange jargon were born - “bulls” and “bears”, bearish players were called bearish, based on the proverb “Do not sell the skin of an unkilled bear”, those who hoped for market growth were called bulls for perseverance and decisive advance. By 1773, brokers managed to collect the amount necessary to build a separate building of the stock exchange (which was originally called “New Jonathan”).

After the final “divorce” of the commodity and financial exchanges, the first one will last for more than a hundred years and will be abolished in 1923, and the Stock Exchange, having changed the building several times, will continue to work to this day. The third building of the Royal Exchange, erected according to the strict classic design of William Tight in the 1840s, after its closure fell into decay in the 1980s. was converted into a fashionable shopping center. At the eastern entrance to the building are statues of former businessmen in the building - Paul Reuters and George Peabody .