UK Starting Business

Approximately twenty letters were sent to organisations such as the Stock Exchange, The Department of Trade and Industry, the Takeovers Commission, etc. asking for asked only for general information but as certain problems became prominent in my project, the requests grew• to be more and more about specific issues of the area of study.

Whilst collecting this information, there was a considerable amount of time spent disseminating it, categorising issues, deciding which ones were useful and which were not, looking up the meanings of jargon words and so on. This process lasted right up until the last piece of information was collected.

After collecting, understanding, and organising the information (which was by this time a huge library of literature) certain important points had emerged which needed to be explored further.

For this the author chose the in-depth interview as the primary method of investigation. Almost two hours were spent talking to a Fund Manager from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

In preparation for the meeting a brief outlining the areas for discussion at the interview was sent to the respondent, but it was not received in time. It did however arrive after the interview and the respondent was kind in replying to the points listed in the brief and returning it.

Thus two sets of responses were obtained, those from the interview, and those contained in the postal reply. These formed the investigation results.

An analysis of these results painted a picture of what was taking place in the industry, and from this conclusions were drawn concerning the main issues and the major problems facing stockbrokers today and possibly in the future.

The recommendations were dividing into two parts:
Those that the author thought should be implemented immediately and those which the author thought could not be implemented immediately, but which should form longer term objectives for the company.