Around 1900 Britain was exceptionally suited to pioneering large scale enterprises because of the precocious development of its equity markets and London's experimentation with a more eclectic range of corporate governance techniques than the world's smaller and less cosmopolitan financial centers. Information dissemination, incentives and reputation - developed by a serendipitous mix of legal compulsions and flexible voluntarism - set the scene for the growth of large, UK-based, national and international corporations in the twentieth century.