Chairman of the London Stock Exchange who was a voice of calm and reason during the City’s big bang in 1986
When the long-running BBC radio series Desert Island Discs invited Nicholas Goodison to take part in the programme in 1987, he made one stipulation. The interview had to be recorded in his own office, 22 storeys above the City of London, rather than in a BBC studio. Goodison, who has died aged 87, was at the time chairman of the London Stock Exchange, and he had just piloted that institution through the period of enormous change that had acquired the epithet the big bang.
Tall, slightly stooping, quietly spoken and rarely ruffled, Goodison believed that the workplace should be “a place of delight”, and his office reflected that belief. It was furnished with specially commissioned chairs, a table and a bookcase hand-made by Alan Peters, exquisite ornaments, art, and examples of his special interest – barometers and clocks. The chairman’s office was an oasis of calm within a building that hummed with the frenetic energy of Europe’s leading international financial marketplace.
