Management and strategy in the english joint stock banks 1890-1914

Business History

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 1985, Pages 301-315

  Cassis, Youssef ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA   (Switzerland)

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EID: 84928307614     PISSN: 00076791     EISSN: 17437938     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00076798500000045     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. H.S. Foxwell, ‘The Financing of Industry and Trade’, Economic Journal, Vol.27 (1917).
2. A recent examination of the relationship between British banks and industry in P.L. Cottrell, Industrial Finance, 1830-1914: The Finance and Organisation of English Manufacturing Industry (London, 1980).
3. On French banking, see J. Bouvier, Un siècle de banque Francaise (Paris, 1973) and Le Credit Lyonnais de 1863 a 1882 (Paris, 1961).
4. C.A.E. Goodhart, The Business of Banking, 1891-1914 (London, 1972), pp. 127-9.
5. Ibid., pp. 130-32.
6. The Economist Banking Supplement, May 1891 and 1915.
7. For a recent discussion of the concentration in the banking sector in this period see F. Capie and G. Rodrik-Bali, ‘Concentration in British Banking, 1870-1920’, Business History, Vol.XXIV, No. 3 (1982).
8. P.W. Matthews and A.W. Tuke, History of Barclays Bank Limited (London, 1926), p. 8.
9. On R. Vassar-Smith, see R.S. Sayers, Lloyds Bank in the History of English Banking (Oxford, 1957), p.38.
10. W.F. Crick and J.E. Wadsworth, A Hundred Years of Joint Stock Banking (London, 1936), pp.436-43.
11. There is information on Wade in Bankers Magazine (hereafter BM) 1897, Vol. 54, p.366.
12. For Leaf see W. Leaf, Some Chapters of Autobiography, with a Memoir by Charlotte Leaf (London, 1932).
13. W. Bagehot, Lombard Street: A description of the Money Market (London, 1910), p.216.
14. See the evidence of Sir John Lubbock, later Lord Avebury (1843-1913), senior partner of Robarts, Lubbock & Co., before the National Monetary Commission. National Monetary Commission, Interviews on the Banking and Currency Systems of England, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy (thereafter Interviews), under the direction of the Hon. Nelson W. Aldrich, Chairman, Washington, NMC, 61st Congress, 2nd. Session, Senate Doc. No. 405 (1910), p. 119.
15. ‘The appearance of a private banker on the Board of Directors of a joint stock company, excepting a first class insurance office, a colonial bank or a gas, water or dock company, has always been regarded as rather contrary to established notions of the fitness of the things’, Financial Times, 26 Feb. 1891.
16. R. Greenhill, ‘The Nitrate and Iodine Trades, 1880-1914’, in D. C. St. M. Platt (ed.), Business Imperialism 1840-1930. A Study based on British experience in Latin America (Oxford, 1977), p.243.
17. R. Henriques, Marcus Samuel, First Viscount Bearsted (London, 1960).
18. Hambros Bank’s portfolio, for example, contained in 1896, 28 Mining companies. Cf. Hambros Bank Archives, Guildhall Library, London, Ms. 19,036, Accounts, Annual Statements of balances of stocks and shares, 1887-1920.
19. B. Supple, The Royal Exchange Assurance. A History of British Insurance, 1720-1970 (Cambridge, 1970), pp.78, 352-3. The Grenfells and the Lubbocks, two of the most famous dynasties of English banking, were each represented for over a century on the Board of the Royal Exchange Assurance, from the end of the eighteenth century to 1914.
20. BM (1897), Vol. LXIV, p.521.
21. B. Supple, op. cit., p.330.
22. Company File 28,525, London Trust Co., 1890. A few brewer magnates were to be found amongst the large shareholders, such as the Combes, Lord Iveagh, Henry C. Bonsor, Edgar Lubbock, Watneys etc. The amount held is given in the nominal value of the stock.
23. Company File 28,276, Merchants’ Trust, 1901.
24. Arthur Keen, Chairman of the London City and Midland Bank, who needed £500,000 in July 1899, pointed out that Glyn’s was prepared to give £250,000 without securities, but one of the directors insisted that ample securities should be given and that the Chairman of the bank should give undoubted securities. Midland Bank Archives (hereafter MBA), E. Holden’s Diary, 1899-1902, p.282.
25. In October 1902, Alexander Lawrie, director of the Midland Bank and partner in A. Lawrie & Co. East India and Australia merchants, obtained a personal loan of 20,000, making his total borrowings from the Midland Bank 85,000, ibid., 1902-3, p.364, etc.
26. National Monetary Commission, Interviews, op. cit., pp.61-2.
27. MBA, Minutes of the Board of Directors, 1899.
28. National Monetary Commission, op. cit., p. 115; MBA, Letter Book, Letter from H. Van Beek (Foreign Department Manager) to J.E. Gardiner (National City Bank, New York), 15 Oct. 1907.
29. BM (1891), Vol.LII, p.21.
30. Milner Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Vol.481, fols. 21-30.
31. Y. Cassis, Les banquiers de la City à l‘époque Edouardienne, (1890-1914) (Geneva, 1984).
32. Jean Bouvier, Le Crédit Lyonnais, op. cit., pp. 143-9.
33. D. Joslin, A Century of Banking in Latin America (London, 1963), p. 194.
34. D. Joslin, op. cit., pp. 64-5. The promoters included representatives from Glyn, Mills, Currie & Co., the well-known bankers, Robert Benson & Co., merchant bankers, E. Johnston & Co., one of the leading firms in the coffee trade as well as the financiers, Bischoffsheim and Goldschmidt, and others.
35. For Latin America see D. Joslin, op. cit., and C. Jones, ‘Commercial Banks and Mortgage Companies’, in D.C.St.M. Platt (ed.), op. cit. pp. 17-52.
36. On the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, see Frank H.H. King, ‘British Chartered Banking: Climax in the East’ in F.H.H. King, Asian Policy, History and Development. Collected Essays (Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hongkong, 1979).
37. For a general view on the subject see A.S.J. Baster, The International Banks (London, 1935).
38. For a definition of a ‘banking group’ as used here, see Jean Bouvier, Initiation auvocabulaire er aux mecanismes economiques contemporains (XIXeme-XXeme siecles) (Paris 1977), p. 135.
39. On Ernest Cassel, see Kurt Grunwald, ‘“Windsor-Cassel” - The Last Court Jew. Prolegomena to a Biography of Sir Ernest Cassel’ in Leo Baeck Year Book, 14 (1969), pp. 119-51, and P. Thane’s entry in the Dictionary of Business Biography, Vol.I. See also National Bank of Egypt, 1898-1948 (printed for private circulation, 1948).
40. Col. J.T. North, Robert Harvey, his right-hand man, and a few others controlled in particular the Colorado Nitrate Co., the Lagunas Syndicate, the Liverpool Nitrate Co. and the Primitiva Nitrate Co. In connection with this nitrate business were also founded the Bank of Tarapaca and London as well as the Nitrate Railways Co., controlled by the same group. D. Joslin, op. cit. pp. 174-201.
41. J. Crossley and J. Blanford, The D.C.O. Story (1925-1971) (London, 1971).
42. On the main phases of the discussion concerning the Gold reserves, see JIB(1907), pp. 1-26 and 66-77; BM(1913), Vol.XCV, pp. 698-9. More generally on the question, see M. de Cecco, Money and Empire. The International Gold Standard, 1890-1914 (Oxford, 1974).
43. On Samuel Montagu, later Lord Swaythling, see MBA, ‘Samuel Montagu & Co. A brief Account of the development of the Firm’, by Sydney A. Franklin, private note, 1967.
44. Samuel Montagu left £1,146,000 on his death. On Robert Fleming, see W.T. Jackson, The Enterprising Scot. Investors in the American West after 1873 (Edinburgh, 1969), pp.21-2, 69-71. Robert Fleming left £2,175,000.