Toys for boys who play the markets

Twelve years ago, on a rainy afternoon when nothing much else seemed to be happening, I abandoned my desk in Canary Wharf for a few hours in order to track down a new and obscure betting operation somewhere off the Mile End Road. The managing director was a large, florid man in his late forties. He smoked a succession of fat cigars and looked the picture of ill-health. No medically-minded betting man would have offered better than evens on his survival into the new millennium.

The business he ran belied his appearance however. The office, in a quiet cul-de-sac, was newly fitted out and spotlessly clean. The trading screens were impressively up-to-date and there was a buzz of excitement. It all pointed to the presence of serious money behind the operation — which, so my host hinted more than once, there was.

I had alighted on a spread-betting firm, whose primary function was to offer its clients — then mainly City professionals — the opportunity to make leveraged bets on movements in financial markets.