During his nearly four decades in the City, Tim Cockroft has had a front-row seat to the trials and tribulations of London’s stock market.

He started his career in 1986 on the old stock exchange trading floor with jobber Pinchin Denny, just as the ‘Big Bang’ of deregulation was getting into full swing. Three years later, Charles Peel offered a 22-year-old Cockroft a place among the seven original employees of broker Peel Hunt.