The globalization of securities investment and investors in the early 20th century Britain.

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It is the object of this research to clear the facts of British overseas securities investment, which can be regarded as the first ‘globalization of securities investment', from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. The research is divided into two parts.Firstly, we has cleared some characters of British overseas securities investment. Although British funds were invested globally, British capital exports were characterized by concentration with regard to recipient country, industries and financial instruments. Concerning recipients, the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia and India together absorbed 55% of the capital between 1865 and 1914. The two major investment channels for British overseas investment were government obligations and railway securities, together accounting for 68% of the aggregate capital invested. British capital was exported by means of debentures, ordinary shares, preference shares and notes. Fixed-interest obligations (debentures 68%, preference shares 6%) composed 74% of all capital ; equities representing 23% and notes 3%. In this way, British capital were characterized by these concentration.Secondly, we has tried to presume some characters of the securities investors, who were main players in overseas investment. Concerning them, there is no direct data. If we assume the overseas investment reflected the income level of the middle classes directly, however, 40% of the funds for overseas investment came from London. From the fact that Londoners composed over 50% of stockholders for the enterprises that operated in foreign countries and the British Empire, it can be presumed that many of overseas investors were pure investors and merchant class in London. Therefore it has confirmed that there was a strong bias that investors in London preferred overseas investment to investment for domestic enterprises.