User:Dominic Sayers/UnderConstruction/Big Bang (financial markets)

The phrase big bang, used in reference to the sudden deregulation of financial markets, was coined to describe the Thatcher government's 1986 abolition of the distinction between stockjobbers and stockbrokers on the London Stock Exchange.

Other reforms were enacted at the same time, and it was the aggregation of the measures plus the expected increase in market activity that led to the event being called the big bang.

Subsequent similar actions, such as the deregulation of the Japanese financial markets in 2001, have inevitably also been tagged with the phrase big bang.