Janette Rutterford

The Open University (UK) · Department of Accounting and Finance

This study tests a gender threat hypothesis whereby having a financial advisor of the opposite gender results in gender stereotypical risk attitudes in portfolio choice. We employ a unique dataset of 1,621 advised UK investors, combined with information on the gender of their financial advisors. Confirming the hypothesis, our results show that men...

The Unsung Activists: UK Shareholder Investigation Committees, 1888-1940 As companies became larger and shareholders more numerous in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain, the conventional wisdom is that the free-rider problem inhibited active shareholder participation. Discontented shareholders could sell in the market, but it was long b...

This study investigates the portfolio asset allocation of UK investment trusts between 1914 and 1928 using a unique hand-collected dataset of 41 companies, which comprises 40,875 portfolio holdings. UK investment trusts not only survived WWI without major losses but also had a remarkable performance in the 1920s, which led to a wave of new incorpor...

After the introduction of limited liability, a growing number of individuals in Britain from a widening social spectrum, including the less affluent, began to own stocks and shares. Drawing upon a unique and large dataset of 35 848 investors between 1870 and 1935, this study analyses joint holdings which have been a neglected aspect of investor beh...

This study looks at the valuation of U.K. investment trusts for the 50 years following their appearance as companies in the 1880s. Based on a large and unique dataset compiled from primary sources, our calculations reveal a huge variation between the ordinary share prices of investment trusts and their underlying net asset “fundamental” values. Thi...

Cet article met au jour le paradoxe selon lequel, au début du XXe siècle, en Grande-Bretagne, des femmes pouvaient disposer du même droit de vote que les hommes en tant qu’actionnaires d’entreprises tout en demeurant privées du suffrage parlementaire. Il explore comment le mouvement des suffragettes a interagi avec l’action de ces femmes actionnair...

Setting savings goals can increase wealth accumulation behaviour, yet it depends on how challenging the goals are. Using rarely available savings goal data from 1,760 clients of an advisory investment firm, we identify gender attitudinal differences in goal amounts: men choose more ambitious savings goals than women, independently from expected lif...

This chapter looks at how the now well-known institutional investment approaches to adding value, such as diversification, evolved in the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. The chapter explores how ways to optimize returns while minimizing risk for long-term investors were developed, promoted through financial advice m...

This paper explores the reasons for relatively large numbers of women in England and Wales investing in government and corporate securities by the second half of the 19 th century. The background context is that, by the Edwardian era; the growth in population in England and Wales; higher real incomes; and smaller families had increased demand from...

British Investment Trusts 1868 to 1928: Portfolio Diversification and the Beginnings of Institutional Investment. How investment trusts decided on asset allocation, market timing and stock selection strategies.

UK investment trust companies were at the forefront of financial innovation during the so-called first globalization era before the First World War. This study examines in detail their portfolio strategies using a unique dataset of 115 portfolio observations for 30 different investment trust companies, comprising a total of 32,708 portfolio holding...

This article analyses the network of UK closed-end investment trust companies, the early pioneers of diversification before World War I, compiling data from different original sources with regard to their directors’ backgrounds and their characteristics as listed companies. Our results reveal that the majority of these early asset managers were mer...

Women, Literature and Finance in Victorian Britain: Cultures of Investment. ByNancy Henry. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. ix + 284 pp. Index. Cloth, $89.99. ISBN: 978-3-319-94330-5. - Volume 93 Issue 1 - Janette Rutterford

This article describes how and why the Thatcher government introduced index‐linked gilts in 1981. It outlines the earlier deliberations by the monetary authorities during the 1950s and 1960s on how an indexed government security might help or hinder the fight against inflation. Although these discussions came to nothing, rising inflation and increa...

This study contributes to a growing volume of scholarship that highlights the importance of financial diversification in business history. It shows that, pre-WWI, financial advice for equal portfolio weighting, the so-called naïve diversification, then called scientific investment or geographical distribution of risk, was a sophisticated strategy f...

This study contributes to a growing volume of scholarship that highlights the importance of financial diversification in business history. It shows that, pre-WWI, financial advice for equal portfolio weighting, the so-called naïve diversification, then called scientific investment or geographical distribution of risk, was a sophisticated strategy f...

We report research on investor susceptibility to the disposition effect, a financial decision-making bias where investors have a greater propensity to realize gains than realize losses. Despite theoretical arguments for the influence of emotions, research on susceptibility to this bias, on real investors, has relied primarily on socio-demographic e...

This paper investigates Victorian investor financial portfolio strategies in England and Wales during the second half of the nineteenth century. We find that investors held on average about half of their gross wealth in the form of 4 or 5 liquid financial securities, but were reluctant to adopt fully contemporary financial advice to invest equal am...

This chapter explores the development of a “nation of shareholders” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It considers how and why investor expanded their range of investments from local to regional and from national to international. In particular, the chapter explores the increasing importance of investment in this period through...

Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors during Britain's Financial Revolution, 1690–1750. By Amy M. Froide . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. vi + 225 pp. Figures, tables, bibliography, index. Cloth, $90.00. ISBN: 978-0-19-876798-5. - Volume 91 Issue 2 - Janette Rutterford

The role of the small shareholder has been largely ignored in the literature, which has tended to concentrate on controlling shareholders and family ownership. Yet, focus on the importance of small shareholders can capture significant aspects of financial development. Pre-1970 debates and policy conflicts linked to stock exchange development concen...

This article examines the long-run evolution of local bias by UK investors between the 1870s and the 1930s. It uses a large sample of nearly 30,000 shareholders based on 197 sets of share records, a large and representative database of the investor population across sectors and time. It investigates the structure and the evolution of local investme...

The disposition effect is an investment bias where investors hold stocks at a loss longer than stocks at a gain. This bias is associated with poorer investment performance and exhibited to a greater extent by investors with less experience and less sophistication. A method of managing susceptibility to the bias is through use of stop losses. Using...

Since the beginning of the 20th century, institutional investors have gained prominence in UK and US financial markets not only because of changes in economic access but also because of changes in the way governments protect investors. In this chapter, we discuss how markets have evolved in response to these changes by focusing on four types of inv...

There are a number of reasons why investor portfolio characteristics are of interest. First, there is limited evidence of what individual investors actually held in their portfolios in the past, including, for example, whether there were significant differences between male and female investors. Second, investors’ portfolio holdings are relevant to...

The paper offers textual evidence from a series of financial advice documents in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century of how UK investors perceived of and managed risk. In the world's largest financial centre of the time, UK investors were familiar with the concept of correlation and financial advisers’ suggestions were consi...

We argue that women have long been involved in the financial sector, as investors and savers. As legislation gave married women equal rights to those of spinsters and widows by the end of the nineteenth century, and as low-risk securities that appealed to women were increasingly offered to investors, so women increased in importance relative to men...

Investment Management in Boston: A History. ByDavid Grayson Allen. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015. x + 432 pp. Tables, photographs, illustrations, notes, index. Cloth, $90.00; paper, $29.95. ISBN: cloth, 978-1-62534-102-0; paper, 978-1-62534-103-7. - Volume 90 Issue 1 - Janette Rutterford

The paper examines the long run evolution of local bias by UK investors over almost seven decades between the 1870s and the 1930s. It uses a very large sample of nearly 30,000 shareholders based on 197 sets of share records, a large and representative database of the investor population across sectors and time. It investigates the structure and the...

The paper examines the long run evolution of local bias by UK investors over almost seven decades between the 1870s and the 1930s. It uses a very large sample of nearly 30,000 shareholders based on 197 sets of share records, a large and representative database of the investor population across sectors and time. It investigates the structure and the...

The paper examines the long run evolution of local bias by UK investors over almost seven decades between the 1870s and the 1930s. It uses a very large sample of nearly 30,000 shareholders based on 197 sets of share records, a large and representative database of the investor population across sectors and time. It investigates the structure and the...

This study deals with the impact of financialisation on the development of charity during the 19th century. We argue that this has two key aspects, firstly the growth of charitable provision via limited companies and secondly the financial audit by charities of the claimants who approached them, Limited companies operated mainly in the field of sub...

This paper explores the impact of the Great War on the Blackpool Tower Company (BTC), in particular on profits and taxation. It uses archival material on BTC to chart the impact on it of wartime imposed excess profits duty (EPD) and entertainments tax (ET) and the extent of its disclosures to shareholders on these and related subjects. BTC reacted...

Abstract: The paper revisits the performativity thesis in economics arguing that there is a condition of mutual immanence between established economic practices and existing forms of knowledge. Drawing from Foucault's analysis, it stresses the plural character of knowledge, which includes not only scientific models but also every form of practical...

This book examines the impact of the Second World War on personal finance in Britain. It covers the periods in chronological order, starting with the prewar period 1918–1939 and followed by the war years 1939–1945. It then looks postwar and covers, in separate chapters, 1945–1947, 1948–1951, 1951–1957, and concludes with a very brief look at 1957 a...

Wall Street Women. By FisherMelissa S.. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012. xii + 227 pp. Photographs, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $79.95; paper, $22.95. ISBN: cloth, 978-0-8223-5330-0; paper, 978-0-8223-5345-4. doi:10.1017/S0007680513000792 - Volume 87 Issue 3 - Janette Rutterford

In this paper, I explore actual portfolios containing 2,316 individual securities, held by a sample of 508 British investors at death in the period 1870 to 1902. I examine how many securities these investors held, whether they diversified, and how these portfolio characteristics changed over the period. By so doing, I can provide data on actual num...

UK shareholders, as a percentage of the population, currently outweigh the US equivalent figure. They also did so pre-World War I. This paper investigates trends in shareholder numbers, noting a major rise over the last 100 years, in particular during the last quarter century. Shareholders, as a percentage of the population in emerging markets such...

There has been extensive questioning of the ‘separate spheres’ model of nineteenth-century society which views women as confined to the private realm of home and family. Recent commentators suggest that it is appropriate to see investment as linking rather than separating the private and the public spheres. It was not investment itself but certain...

Emily Nugent, the Marchioness of Westmeath, was one of the most famous and infamous women of her day. Pamphlets were written by her and about her as she attempted to separate from her abusive husband, fought his attempts to retain conjugal rights, and took him to court for maintenance payments and custody of her children. Her struggle to achieve fi...

In reviewing a recent collection of papers on Victorian investments, R. J. Morris com-ments that "Gender tends to be a category rather than a relationship in these essays . . . cul-tural processes are crucial to historical understanding but they need to be examined in association with economic and social relationships" (Morris : is chapter explores...

This article discusses the interaction between directors and small shareholders who made up the majority of names on the share ledgers of many companies in both the UK and the USA. It is concerned with the period 1890–1965 and concentrates on the management/shareholder relationship in the context of the annual general meeting and shareholder activi...

This article discusses the interaction between directors and small shareholders who made up the majority of names on the share ledgers of many companies in both the UK and the USA. It is concerned with the period 1890–1965 and concentrates on the management/shareholder relationship in the context of the annual general meeting and shareholder activi...

This paper explores the history of the new issue prospectus on the London Stock Exchange from the advent of limited liability to World War II. The varying types of securities being offered to an increasingly large public influenced the nature of the information provided, and the increasing maturity of the new issue market allowed comparisons to be...

Victorian Investments: New Perspectives on Finance and Culture. Edited by HenryNancy and SchmittCannon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. 250 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, notes, index. Paper, $24.95. ISBN: 978-0-253-22027-1. - Volume 84 Issue 2 - Janette Rutterford

Although there is general consensus that share ownership increased in Britain from the late nineteenth century onwards, less attention has been paid to the extent to which this increase reflected a change in the social class of shareholders. In the early twentieth century, there was a frequent claim that increased ownership resulted from the democr...

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed significant developments in the structure, organization, and expansion of financial markets and opportunities for investment in Britain and its empire. But very little is known about how men and women engaged with these markets and with new opportunities for money-making. In what ways did...

Individual decisions regarding saving and investment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries need to be understood in the context of changes in broader economic, social, and political processes. As well as explaining how the separate contributions to this book address in different ways the processes by which investment and accumulation took...

The disposition effect is an investment bias where investors are reluctant to realise losses yet have a propensity to realise gains. The disposition effect is a well documented bias throughout the world and this paper offers findings on UK individual investors. The methodology used is survival analysis of roundtrip positions because this enables ac...

This chapter looks at how investors have changed the way in which they value shares over time. The four key ways were book value, dividend and earnings yields, Price Earnings Ratios and discounted cash flow. The chapter explores an early dependence on book value, the assets to back the nominal value of the shares and on dividend yields, with shares...

This paper explores the popularity of the annual general meeting, its evolution over time and the roles played by directors and shareholders in managing the proceedings. In particular, the role of the small investor and of shareholder associations is explored as well as variations in voting rights over time. The paper is based on reports of annual...

This article explores the relationship between taxation and investment analysis technique for both the USA and the UK in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article argues that the complexity of the British tax system, its emphasis on dividend payout rather than total return, the overlap between corporate and personal taxation, and the vari...

[About the book]: The Routledge Companion to Accounting History shows how the seemingly innocuous practice of accounting has pervaded human existence in fascinating ways at numerous times and places; from ancient civilisations to the modern day, and from the personal to the political. Placing the history of accounting in context with other fields o...

This article explores the widening ownership of stocks and shares in Great Britain between 1870 and 1935. It demonstrates the extent of that growth and the increasing number of small investors. Women became more important in terms of the number of shareholders and value of holdings. Factors that encouraged this trend included the issue of less risk...

This article explores the development of the closed-end investment trust in both the UK and the US, in the context of the investment management strategies adopted and whether they provided value-added services for investors. Although US investment trusts of the 1920s boom years were heavily influenced by their earlier UK counterparts, they differed...

Studies of wealth-holding in nineteenth-century Britain focus either on establishing aggregate measures or on individual case studies. These do not allow for a comparative analysis of the way that the composition of wealth was influenced by age and gender. This article explores the importance of these factors using both a case-study approach and a...

There is considerable scope for increasing the understanding of the history of share ownership. Existing studies of shareholders in the UK are limited in the industries, time periods and shareholder populations they study. This article outlines the methods used by the authors in an ESRC-funded study of shareholders in companies in England and Wales...

Geographers have long been aware of the importance of the friction of distance as an impediment to the flow of information. Studies of the diffusion of information have emphasized how the take up of innovation depends on the spatial location of individuals. Drawing on these ideas, this paper explores the relationships between individual shareholder...

This article examines the causes of the current financial crisis including deregulation, innovation, investor attitudes, transparency, liquidity and risk premia and suggests lessons for trusts and trustees.

This book examines women's financial activity from the early days of the stock market in eighteenth century England and the South Sea Bubble to the mid-twentieth century. The essays demonstrate how many women managed their own finances despite legal and social restrictions and show that women were neither helpless, incompetent and risk-averse, nor...

The nineteenth century was, in Britain as elsewhere, a period of major change in financial behaviour, as new kinds of financial asset became available for investors. It was also a period in which women’s social and economic position altered, at first slowly then with gathering speed. Their economic position changed more rapidly than did their polit...

Women in Business, 1700–1850. By PhillipsNicola. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2006. xi + 299 pp. Figures, tables, appendix, bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $85.00. ISBN: 978–1–84383–183–9. - Volume 82 Issue 2 - Janette Rutterford

This paper explores the so-called democratisation of investment and the factors behind it through the lens of trends in the shareholding populations of the UK and the US for the period 1890 to 1970. It finds that shareholder numbers in the UK – both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population - exceeded those for the US until World Wa...

The objective of this article is to place the debate about women's investment behaviour — in particular their attitude to risk — in a historical context. We examine a number of case studies of investments made by English women between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries and compare the results with the findings of recent surveys of women's...