Accessing Capital Markets : Aristocrats and New Share Issues in the Cycle and Pneumatic Tyre Industries, 1892-1898

The paper reconsiders the boom of the mid 1890s in which a large number of firms in the bicycle, vehicle and pneumatic tyre industries were floated. It investigates why so many of these issues featured aristocratic directors listed in their prospectuses and finds that they exemplified City connections that were a necessary condition for industrial firms located in the regions to access the London equity market. The case shows that the role and value of these directors was to access to capital markets and financial resources, as much as to signal the quality or otherwise of the issues from a market pricing point of view