the world of private banking

88
THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
the British & Californian which, although promoted by the London Financial,
had subsequently become involved with the burgeoning ‘three continents’ bank.
Among the new London-based overseas banks only the Agra was reconstituted
after the crisis and solely as an ‘Anglo-Indian’ bank. This was undertaken by the
important London and Manchester accountant, David Chadwick, who also put
new, post-crisis life into two domestic banks: the Consolidated and the Preston. 63
From the 1830s, British corporate overseas banks had interconnections arising
from interlocking directorships. One responsible but particular factor was the
interests that various partners in a London private bank, Glyn, Mills, took in their
creation, beginning with the Union Bank of Australia formed in 1837. Thereafter,
members of this Lombard Street house were involved in the Bank of Egypt
(1855/6), the Ottoman (1856, a progenitor of the Imperial Ottoman Bank of 1862),
the London & Brazilian (1862), the Anglo-Austrian (1863) and the Imperial Bank
of Persia (1889). City associates of Glyn, Mills, in turn, promoted the Anglo-Italian
(1864), the ‘private’ London & San Francisco (1865), the Bank of Roumania (1866),
the German Bank of London (1871), the Mercantile Bank of the River Plate (1872),
the Banque de Constantinople (1872) and the English Bank of the River Plate
(1881). 64 These instances are indicative of the broader, general interest that private
City houses as a whole took in the new overseas corporate banks, which went
beyond supplying prestigious and decorative directors for their prospectuses. It was
in complete contrast to any involvement with new domestic corporate banks, the
only significant exception being the ‘City’ directorate of the Imperial. Furthermore,
in some cases, private banking’s interrelationships with British-based corporate
overseas banking involved not only City personalities but also European ‘Haute
Finance’. With respect to the Imperial Ottoman, this arose from the compromise
amalgamation of competing syndicates for the concession, leading to the bank’s
having management bases in Constantinople and Paris as well as London. In other
instances, members of the City drew directly upon their respective European
networks, resulting in, for instance, the German Bischoffsheim’s involvement in
the London & Brazilian, the London & San Francisco (plus J. May and R. Sulzbach
(Frankfurt) and C. Griswold (Paris)), the Mercantile Bank of the River Plate (along
with Paribas, H. Oppenheim, Louis d’Erlanger and Louis Beer), Société Générale
63
Bankers’ Magazine (1866), pp. 1324, 1325; Baster, International Banks, pp. 42–3,
158, 246; D.S. Landes, Bankers and Pashas (London, 1958), pp. 244, 290, 292; and Cottrell,
Investment Banking, I, pp. 408–9. For Chadwick, see P.L. Cottrell, ‘David Chadwick’, in D.
Jeremy (ed.), Dictionary of Business Biography, I (London, 1984).
64
A.S.J. Baster, ‘The Origins of British Banking Expansion in the Near East’, in
Economic History Review, vol. 5, 1934/5; idem, International Banks, pp. 95, 99, 112–19,
158; D. Joslin, A Century of Banking in Latin America (Oxford, 1963), pp. 64–5; P.L.
Cottrell, ‘London Financiers and Austria 1863–1875: the Anglo-Austrian Bank’, in Business
History, vol. 11, 1969; and idem, ‘The Coalescence of a Cluster of Corporate International
Banks, 1855–75’, in G. Jones (ed.), Banks and Money: International and Comparative
Finance in History (London, 1991).