Bragg, Stockdale, Hall & Co

Bragg, Stockdale, Hall and Company began when John Bragg, Esq.[1], a gentleman of Cumbria and “friend and neighbour of the Right Honourable Earl of Carlisle”, was elected a member of the London Stock Exchange on April 3rd, 1824 – as the document courtesy of the London Stock Exchange Archive below shows – and opened his offices at No. 6, Throgmorton Street, opposite Drapers’ Hall, where the Old Stock Exchange Tower stands today.

([1] See the Braggs of Whitehaven in the Lake District in The Pedigrees of Beakbane of Lancaster; Bragg of Netherend; Harrison of Grassgarth &c. (London; 1890) – Courtesy of the Bragg, Stockdale, Hall & Co Collection.)

His client list included Benjamin Disraeli, later Earl of Beaconsfield, who speculated so heavily in the South American mining boom which followed the collapse of the Spanish Empire that he was still paying off his debts when he entered parliament in 1837, before going on to become Prime Minister, as shown in his collected letters reprinted below.

In 1846 George Stockdale, Esq., also of Cumbria, was elected to the stock exchange and soon after became partner as their joint business account at the Bank of England shows.

The success and reputation of Bragg & Stockdale grew within the British Empire and beyond, as one can see from the number new enterprises around the world for whom they acted as brokers, specialising in infrastructure projects as mining, telegraphs, ports and railways.

In 1862, for example, they were purchasing bonds for the value of £20,000 from the Crown to be loaned to the colony of Mauritius to build their railway, worth over £20 million today when adjusted for average earnings. (Scrimgeours purchased the majority 51% of the total of £200,000, worth £200 million today.)

On November 7th, 1868, The Illustrated London News reported that John Bragg, Esq., died peacefully on October 20th at his house at No. 1 Porchester Gardens in the City of Westminster, London.

In 1871, Frederic Evans Hall, Esq., an employee of Bragg &  Stockdale was elected to the stock exchange as a full member.

And in 1888, Mr Hall was made partner, and the firm took the full name of Bragg, Stockdale, Hall & Co, keeping the late Mr Bragg in the name as the deeds of association from our own archive show.

By the early 20th century Bragg, Stockdale, Hall & Co was among the top stockbrokers in London, alongside Cazenove, James Capel and Quilter & Co, as shown in their open letter in The Standard from March 9th, 1908, to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, H. H. Asquith, later British Prime Minister and Earl of Oxford, signed by them among the most notable broking houses in the country. (The photograph adjoining shows the stockbrokers on Throgmorton Street on the day the United Kingdom left the Gold Standard in 1931.)

Perhaps more poignant are the names of the partners who died during the First World War, including Hall’s own son Geoffrey, as described online here on the Stock Exchange Roll of Honour.

Over the years they moved offices, first around the corner to No. 57, Old Broad Street in the 1890s, and then along Throgmorton Avenue to Salisbury House on London Wall in the 1960s.

By that time their senior partner was Michael Brudenell-Bruce, then titled Viscount of Savernake, who later became the Earl of Cardigan – his ancestor famously led the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War of 1853-6 – and finally the 8th Marquess of Ailesbury. (He himself served in the Second World War in the Royal Horse Guards, being commissioned as a cavalry officer directly from Eton.)

In 1961, Clive Fiske Harrison[1] was recruited out of the University of Cambridge to Panmure Gordon – founded in 1876 – by Ian Cameron, senior partner and father of future British Prime Minister David Cameron.

In 1973, Clive founded Fiske & Co.

This was during the Arab-Israeli war and subsequent OPEC oil embargo, leading to Prime Minister Edward Heath declaring a state of emergency for the first time since WWII, and the stock market falling 50% in six months. By 1975, inflation was at 25%, the UK was on the verge of asking the IMF for a bailout and phrases like “poor man of Europe” and “managed decline” entered the lexicon.

That same year newcomer Fiske merged as equal partner with Bragg – with the combined entity named simply Fiske – with Clive and Lord Ailesbury as senior partners.

[1] See the Fiskes of Suffolk in The Fiske Family Papers. (Norwich, 1902) – Courtesy of the Bragg, Stockdale, Hall & Co Collection

When Fiske merged with Bragg in 1975 it was noted in the press that an old and noble name that had not yet faded joined with a new one with political connections and a client list on the way up. However, heritage and history were not what Britain was trying to sell nor the British trying to buy, and the brand and the name were allowed to fade from view, although initially Bragg was prominently featured on the letterhead until Fiske & Co became a limited company in 1988.

In more than one way, though, Fiske continued the Bragg traditions of multigenerational private client stockbroking alongside infrastructural investments like its work with Telfos Holdings – originally Charles Clifford founded in 1776 – where Clive was managing director, which constructed trains from Britain to Hungary to South Africa and built the world’s oldest locomotive still in service along with Fiske’s innovative – although sadly eventually failed – bid to purchase London City Airport in 1991 which it led, seconded by Cazenove.

The abiding image of Fiske at this high point was hosting all its clients, including the champagne socialist commissariat of Nalgo, later Unison, the largest trade union who used Fiske as their broker, at Fiske’s annual summer party on the Thames terrace at the House of Lords..

The UK’s anti-historical tide slowly turned and the old names of the City began to be bought up. Some older houses like Barings simply went bust (1890 almost, 1995 definitively) or dwindled into insignificance like Panmure after the Big Bang in 1986, and thus rarity value increased and the survivors were bought up by larger entities. Quilters, founded in 1771, was acquired by Commercial Union in 1988, James Capel, founded 1801, was acquired by HSBC Group in 1994, Cazenoves, founded 1823 was acquired J P Morgan Chase, 2010 and Charles Stanley, founded 1792, was acquired by Raymond James, 2022.

By the time Fiske director, Alexander Fiske-Harrison, revived the predecessor brand name of Bragg, they could claim to be the oldest independent stockbroking firm in the City of London.)

As a historical note, apparently this raised eyebrows at the Security Service, MI5, as Fiske began with two original clients, one being the financier and Clive’s schoolfriend Sir Martyn Arbib and the other being the Soviet state-owned institution, The Moscow Narodny Bank. (It is said Clive had first been flagged during his student days at the university of Philby, Blunt, Burgess, Maclean and Cairncross of the Cambridge Five when he entered into a correspondence with the Embassy of the USSR in London in order to obtain an English-language copy of Marx and Engels’ The Manifesto Of The Communist Party as part of his studies for his History Tripos.)

Lord Ailesbury would go on to become a director of Fiske when it became a limited company, and continued to be so when it went public and listed on the London Stock Exchange. It currently has over $1 billion in assets under management.

In 2000, Fiske listed on the Alternative Investment Market, AIM, as a PLC (the same year it was listed as best performing British stockbroker by Bloomberg by virtue of predicting the collapse of the dot-com bubble.)

The Bragg, Stockdale, Hall & Co name was allowed to fall into abeyance, until December 1st, 2021, when it was revived by Alexander Fiske-Harrison, a director of Fiske and a son of Clive Fiske Harrison, with Lady Kathryn Brudenell-Bruce, daughter of Lord Ailesbury, as a shareholder.

In 2022, it sponsored the women’s polo team Las Sacras Romanas, ‘The Holy Romans’, captained by Austria’s number one female player, Edelfräulein Klarina Pichler in the British Ladies Polo Open at Cowdray Park Polo Club, the polo equivalent of Wimbledon.

They were knocked out in the semi-finals out by ‘Semper Anticus’, a team captained by the top female player in the world, Carina ‘Nina’ Clarkin, niece to Lord Vestey, Master of the Queen’s Horse, and founded by its patrona, Clarinda Tija-Dharmadi.

Bragg, Stockdale, Hall & Co
Incorporated at Companies House, 80 Petty France, Westminster, London SW1H 9EX, United Kingdom
Company Number 13777423

contact@braggstockdalehall.com