In no city in the world has the business of discounting bills of exchange and acceptances been so thoroughly organized as in London. The business of discounting is regulated chiefly by the operations in the open market of the many bankers and brokers, and what is more important, of established companies known as discount houses, especially organized for the purpose of buying and selling bills. Furthermore, through the operations of a large group of bill brokers, corresponding in a way to the commercial paper broker in this country, the means of a prompt and extended distribution of commercial paper is provided.

It was stated by a Federal Reserve official but a short time ago that there were two hundred million dollars bankers' acceptances outstanding in the New York market, whereas there were more than two billion dollars in the London market, without considering the amount of trade acceptances in use.

What Comprises The Great London Money And Discount Market

The banking system in England, and that which comprises the London money market, consists first of the Bank of England, followed by nearly one hundred joint stock banks, the latter maintaining more than seventy-five hundred branches and employing more than one billion dollars in capital. Their resources amount to more than seven billion dollars in deposits alone. The existence of half a hundred colonial banks having resources of one billion dollars available for the London money market, branches of great foreign banks with money aplenty to use for loans and investments, finance houses making a specialty of accepting bills growing out of imports and exports, brokers of commercial paper, investors, such as insurance companies, the larger commercial firms, private bankers, private money lenders, etc., all compose the great money lending interests in London and make up what is better known as the London money market.