Bruce William Southerden

Shaking the Old Oak Tree

The book cover depiction of an old oak tree symbolises the general consumer world of finance, apart from the super-rich, where people after WW2 and earlier had few options (aside from spending) to apply their wealth beyond bank accounts and investment in assets which they hoped would slowly grow over time. Wealth was also subject to much more limited distribution until recent years, with some 90% of wealth in the hands of less than 5% of the population. In such a climate it is little wonder that competition in finance, especially banks, was hardly fierce - players having grown up feeling little need to engage in battles for market share of what was a smaller market. Unlike every other industry around the world, perhaps since Henry Ford. Suddenly the world of money began to explode. Wider distribution of wealth, rising incomes and savings, richer appreciation of assets - and so many new products and ventures to seize on the new opportunities. A world for which traditional finance, banks in particular, was uneducated and little prepared. The necessity to adapt was a slow awakening and, as may seem more clear now, the answer was seen as simply promotion rather than much need to change ways of doing business. People with different skills were hired, such as the author, into an environment broadly slow or unwilling to make serious changes. Hence his reference to an agent of change.