Peter Hobday

[Sir.Mike]

Peter Hobday, who was 79, was a prominent and much-liked member of
Birmingham’s stockbroking community throughout a long career as a
member of the committee of the Birmingham Stock Exchange for many
years and one of the Exchange’s last chairmen in 1985/86.

He spent most of his working life with the Birmingham stockbroker
Barratt & Jeffs and later with GR Dawes, which absorbed it. He became
a member of the Birmingham Exchange in 1968.

As a young man he went to work in the administrative “back” office of
the Birmingham stockbroker Barratt & Jeffs, but was encouraged by
Albert Jeffs, the firm’s senior partner, to move to the “front”
office, acting for clients. There he amassed what former colleagues
recall as an encyclopaedic knowledge of local companies and built up a
considerable clientele.

One, Francis Jephcott, recalls “A more delightful man you couldn’t
wish to meet, a very quiet person, no drama.”

Peter Hobday was a private man, who never married and had no immediate
family. He was a Freemason for 37 years, belonging to five Masonic
Lodges in Warwickshire and Birmingham. He was also for many years a
member of both Warwickshire Cricket Club and the MCC. A fellow Mason
described him a “the sort of chap who would go and deal with it, the
sort of guy that never said ‘no’ to anybody”.

A keen musician, he played both the piano and the organ, notably on
Masonic occasions, for which he was recognised with the title
Provincial Grand Organist. He did not care, though, for the CBSO under
Simon Rattle and for some years went regularly to concerts in London
instead.

Peter Hobday was also an enthusiastic and effective fund-raiser, both
within and outside Freemasonry. He was a member of the Shirley Round
Table and later of the Shirley 41 Club.

He lived nearly all his life in Bournville and remembered a local
charity, St Mary’s Hospice, Selly Oak, in his will.