The Financial Services Industry exists to connect those who have got money with those who want it - to connect the savers to the spenders.

Spenders?
...... is the wrong word. No-one can take other people's money just to spend (except governments, of course). You can only take money if you put it to work to earn enough to reward the donor. To do that you need to be a wealth-creator.

Wealth-creators are one end of the investment chain. They use resources (people, materials, money) to create more wealth than they have consumed. Typically (but by no means exclusively) these are corporations (or companies). Like Glaxo or Vodaphone or, in the US, Microsoft.

At the other end of the chain are savers.

The players
A cast of thousands make their living out of this money chain. These players can be divided into owners, directors, providers, markets, feeders and regulators.

'Owners' means shareholders. We take the lid off public corporate ownership in Owners.

What drives Directors, and why do they earn so much?

Fund management groups and insurance companies (at least in some of their guises) are Providers.

Markets are the essential grease to the wheels, and Stock Markets and Futures Markets are the most important.

Brokers, investment bankers, stock analysts, journalists and investor relations advisers are Feeders.

IFAs and Advisers are also feeders, but deserve their own pages.

The key regulator is the Financial Services Authority, responsible to the Treasury, where all power ultimately lies.

The dividing lines between categories can be vague - particularly between feeders and providers. And many players play more than one part. But the one thing they have in common is that they are paid out of the money chain that runs from the wealth-creator to the saver.