The measurement of business performance addresses issues central to business history and this paper examines the evidence on rates of return for UK risk-bearing capital across the period 1855-1914. Existing series, based on the archival records of individual companies and on market data, provide...

The historical literature on Bryant and May, market leaders for many years in the English match trade, is rich and interesting although it contains little on the connections between labour and technology-related managerial practices and the economic returns that they engendered. This is...

Since the Reformation, the established Church had monopolised the English burial trade. In London, in the 1830s, burial conditions posed a serious threat to public health and a number of limited liability companies were licensed by Parliament to provide new facilities for the interment of the...

The patterns of change in the financial reporting practices of the early railway companies, and their causes, are important aspects of the evolution of accounting practice more generally. They have accordingly been widely discussed in the literature, although the views expressed have rarely been...

Dividends can provide a tangible signal of earnings, but this function depends upon characteristics of financial reporting that were not always present in early financial capitalism. Although eighteenth-century English canal companies offered low‐risk securitized capital approved by Parliament...

The main intention of this paper is to consider the disclosure practices of quoted UK companies during an important period of change in financial accounting practice, the first quarter of the twentieth century. The paper focuses in particular on levels of disclosure, as indicated by the volume...

<title/> The three UK rolling stock companies (ROSCOs) are a product of the privatization of the railway industry in the 1990s. As the UK approaches the 25th anniversary of the first privatization of a state-owned industry (telecommunications), this article evaluates the background and the structure of...

A significant aspect of the privatization of the British railway industry was that the provision of passenger train services would be awarded on a competitively tendered franchise basis. The turbulence in the ownership of the East Coast Main Line (ECML) franchise is testimony to the inherent and...

George Hudson was the most important railway promoter of his time. He had a particular aptitude for visualizing and arranging spectacular company and line amalgamations and his activities helped to bring about the beginnings of a more modern railway network. In 1849 he exercised effective...