UK Starting Business

The actual method of investigation followed by the author began with a mind map centred on the project objectives. These objectives were derived after a short period of library research undertaken in order to identify the main issues of the subject area. These issues then became objectives of the investigation (and are shown in Chapter One of this project).

After gaining an understanding of what the Big Bang was, the author began formulating questions as to how the changes incurred during the Big Bang could possibly effect the stock broking environment. Some of these questions are listed below:

1. Would the relaxing of membership requirements result in a severe attack on small and medium sized stock broking firms by large British and foreign financial conglomerates?

2. Would the abolition of fixed scale commission rates lead to price wars or would tacit cartels emerge?

3. What are the chances that small and medium sized broking firms will be able to compete? How are they competing at present?

4. What will the stock broking industry look like in the future?

Is it inevitable that smaller stock broking firms will fail?

The next stage in the research process was to amount and review the published data on the subject area in order to answer some of the questions which had been raised.

This section of the research which was by for the most time-consuming was carried out in the following ways:

1. Library research - Frequent visits were made to the Portsmouth Central and Polytechnic libraries to obtain books, reports, statistics, newspaper cuttings, journals etc. These libraries were visited every two days in order to increase the chances of obtaining popular or rare information.