the world of private banking

56
THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
universal banking system. 53 The great banks provided ‘development assistance to
the strong’, but they badly neglected small and medium-sized enterprises. 54 The
latter, however, could turn to the regional joint-stock banks or to the local private
banks, depending on their size and needs.
The Lasting Influence of Private Bankers
One of the main contributions of private bankers in the second half of the nineteenth
century was the establishment of the new joint-stock banks, which have dominated the
financial world ever since. 55 Such major banks as the Deutsche Bank, the Dresdner Bank
and the Commerz-Bank in Germany, the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas (now part of
BNP Paribas) in France, the Banque de Bruxelles (now integrated into ING) in Belgium,
the Swiss Bank Corporation (now part of UBS) in Switzerland, or the Credit-Anstalt (now
part of Bank of Austria Creditanstalt, a subsidiary of UniCredit) in Austria − to give but a
few well-known names − were all founded by private bankers in the third quarter of the
nineteenth century. 56 In Britain, by contrast, the initiative for the foundation of the new
joint-stock banks in the 1830s and 1840s had come from merchants and industrialists
rather than private bankers, who were at first antagonistic to the ‘new bank’. However,
the difference between Britain and continental Europe should not be overstated. On the
one hand, private bankers were instrumental in the creation of several British overseas
banks in the 1850s and 1860s. Glyn, Mills & Co., London’s largest private bank, was
particularly active in the field with the promotion of six such banks, including the Bank
of Australasia, the Imperial Ottoman Bank, the Anglo-Austrian Bank, and the London
and Brazilian Bank. 57 On the other hand, the conversion of private banks into joint-stock
banks led to the formation of several major clearing banks, Lloyds Bank and Barclays
Bank being the most prominent among them. 58
53
D.Ziegler, ‘Banking and the Rise and Expansion of Industrial Capitalism in
Germany’, in A. Teichova, G. Kurgan-van Hentenryk and D. Ziegler (eds), Banking, Trade
and Industry: Europe, America and Asia from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century
(Cambridge, 1997), pp. 142–4.
54
R. Tilly, ‘German banking, 1850–1914: Development Assistance to the Strong’, in
Journal of European Economic History, vol. 15, 1986, pp. 113–52.
55
The continuity between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ bank was clearly established by
David Landes some fifty years ago in his seminal article ‘Vieille banque et banque nouvelle:
la révolution bancaire du XIX e siècle’, in Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, vol.
3, 1956.
56
See L. Gall et al., The Deutsche Bank 1870–1975 (London, 1995); Bussière,
Paribas; H. Bauer, Société de Banque Suisse, 1872–1972 (Basel, 1972).
57
P.L. Cottrell, ‘A Cluster of Corporate International Banks, 1855–75’, in Business
History, vol. 33, 3, 1991.
58
See R.S. Sayers, Lloyds Bank in the History of English Banking (Oxford, 1957); M.
Ackrill and L. Hannah, Barclays: the Business of Banking 1690–1996 (Cambridge, 2001).