Pioneering Modern Corporate Governance: A View from London in 1900

Around 1900 Britain was exceptionally suited to pioneering largescale enterprises because of the precocious development of itsequity markets and London's experimentation with a more eclecticrange of corporate governance techniques than the world's smallerand less cosmopolitan financial centers. Information dissemination,incentives, and reputation—developed by a serendipitousmix of legal compulsions and flexible voluntarism—setthe scene for the growth of large, UK-based, national and internationalcorporations in the twentieth century. "The investment business is not with us as well developed oras well understood as it is in England." W. H. Lyon, Capitalization (Boston, 1913), 207.