the world of private banking

52
THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
was the Banque Lambert, to which Léon Lambert (who had married Lucie de
Rothschild) gave a new impetus, not least through his support for King Leopold
II’s infamous exploits in Congo. Other prominent private bankers included Josse
Allard, particularly active in founding Belgian and foreign companies; and Edouard
Empain, a self-made man who made his fortune setting up transport companies
and power firms and who founded his own bank, the Banque Empain, in 1881.
In terms of overall influence within their banking system, the leading Dutch
private bankers enjoyed a very favourable position until the very end of the
nineteenth century. This was due to the comparatively weak development of
the large commercial banks and the inordinate role played by the call-money
advanced to the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (the so-called prolongatie) in the
money market, whose amount was more than twice the country’s aggregate fixed
deposits by the eve of the First World War. 34 As late as 1890, the private banks
could still compete in terms of size with the joint-stock banks, with total balance
sheets reaching about 20 million guilders for houses such as Hope & Cie or R.
Mees & Zoonen, and about 30 million for the Twentsche Bank, then the country’s
largest. It was not before 1910 that the gap really widened. 35
Private international bankers remained a far more significant force in
Switzerland than in any other European country bar Britain. The country was
imbued with banking, especially private banking, traditions. This partly explains
the longstanding success of the Swiss haute banque. Its survival was also the
result of a regional specialization: the new credit banks (Crédit Suisse) in Zurich,
the old private banks in Geneva. 36 Geneva abounded in private banking dynasties,
some dating back to the Huguenot diasporas of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. There were still some fifteen houses belonging to the Geneva Protestant
haute banque in the late nineteenth century, led by Hentsch & Cie (established
1796), Lombard Odier & Cie (1798) and Pictet & Cie (1805), all linked by a
dense network of family relationships. They managed vast amounts of capital on
behalf of a wealthy cosmopolitan clientele. They were thus able to preserve a
niche market where they enjoyed a unique competitive advantage based on their
old-established reputation for financial expertise; their international network of
relationships, especially with the Parisian haute banque; and the emerging role
34
J. Jonker, ‘Spoilt for Choice? Banking Concentration and the Structure of the Dutch
Capital Market, 1900–1940’, in Y. Cassis, G.D. Feldman and U. Olsson (eds), The Evolution
of Financial Institutions and Markets in Twentieth Century Europe (Aldershot, 1995).
35
J. Jonker, Mees Pierson. The Link Between Past and Future: 275 Years of Tradition
and Innovation in Dutch Banking (Amsterdam, 1997), pp. 17–19.
36
Switzerland’s third financial centre, Basel, hosted the Swiss Bankverein, the
country’s largest bank at the turn of the twentieth century, established by the city’s old
private banking families. See M. Mazbouri, L’émergence de la place financière Suisse
(1890–1913): Itinéraire d’un grand banquier (Lausanne, 2005).