Banks and the finance of industry

I (Lucy Newton) completed my thesis on the finance of industry in Sheffield after the introduction of limited liability in 1855. In addition to raising external funding through the selling of shares, Sheffield companies both large and small turned to the towns banking institutions.

My doctoral research has led to a continued interest in the provision of finance by banks to industry and the impact that this had on regional and national economies. The work has moved forward into the twentieth century to consider the changing nature of financial provision by banks following the amalgamation movement in Britain which started in the 1880s and culminated in 1918 with the remained 'Big Five' clearing banks.

Themes

Relationships between banks and their industrial customers, especially the nature of trust built between banks and customers, has been an important theme of this work. Another theme is the impact upon regional and national economies of the propensities of banks to lend to industry. In the twentieth century, intervention by governments to involve banks in promoting economic recover and/or provision of finance to small-scale enterprises has been an issue considered with Professor Peter Scott

Outputs

Lucy Newton, 'The Birth of Joint-Stock Banking: A Comparison of England and New England , Business History Review, Vol. 84, No. 1, pp. 27-52, 2010.

Peter Scott and Lucy Newton, 'Jealous monopolists'? British banks and responses to the Macmillan Gap during the 1930s', Vol. 8, Issue 4, 2007, Enterprise and Society.

Lucy Newton 'Government, the Banks & Industry in Interwar Britain', in T. Gourvish (ed.), Business and Politics in Europe, 1900-1970 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 145-168.

Lucy Newton, 'Trust and virtue in banking: the assessment of borrowers by bank managements at the turn of the twentieth century', Financial History Review, Volume 7, Part 2, 2000, pp. 177-199.

'Banking in the English provinces, 1826-1857: to branch or not to branch?' Business and Economic History, Nov. 1998 (with P. L. Cottrell).

'Regional bank-industry relations during the mid-nineteenth century: links between bankers and manufacturing in Sheffield', Business History, Vol. 38, No. 3, 1996, pp. 64-83.