“If you see Sid, tell him”, several people urged of the main character in the 1986 advertising campaign that informed members of the public they could buy shares in the recently privatised British Gas.
The campaign helped expand a domestic investor base that was already hungry for UK stocks. In the early 1990s, home-grown ownership of the UK equity market was about 80 per cent.
Now that figure has plummeted to about 35 per cent, the lowest among comparably rich countries, whose domestic ownership ranges between 50 and 90 per cent. Foreign ownership of UK equities has jumped to 69 per cent from about 20 per cent three decades ago, according to a new report from US investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Several factors have contributed
