Victoria Barnes

Virtuous banking: the role of the community in monitoring English joint-stock banks and their managements in the nineteenth century

This chapter explores the activity of English joint-stock banks, as a precursor to the modern corporation, in the provision of credit in the first half of the nineteenth century. It employs new archival data from bank archives to show that while these firms did not have full corporate attributes, they exhibited new governance and managerial structures. It finds that the changes in organisational form did not result in a new revolutionary way to assess loan applicants. The decision to lend remained based upon informal information gathering through commercial networks as well as upon subjective measures, such as the personality or character of the applicant.

How far does the apple fall from the tree? The size of English bank branch networks in the nineteenth century

Abstract After the Bank Charter Act in 1833, English banks could branch nationally without legal or geographical restriction. It has been previously thought that despite this freedom, early English joint-stock banks predominantly began as single units. Drawing upon a new data set, this article maps the growth of branch banking, the size of bank networks and their geographical location and spread. It demonstrates that banks pursued branching strategies energetically against the intentions of regulators and were successful in forming large and complex networks. However, ultimately, before 1880 the majority settled for local, district and multi-regional structures, as opposed to national structures.

Formalising Credit Markets? The Entrance of English Joint-Stock Banks

Barnes and Newton explore the activity of English joint-stock banks, as a precursor to the modern corporation, in the provision of credit in the first half of the nineteenth century. They employ new archival data from bank archives to show that while these firms did not have full corporate attributes, they exhibited new governance and managerial structures. The authors find that the changes in organisational form did not result in a new revolutionary way to assess loan applicants. The decision to lend remained based upon informal information gathering through commercial networks as well as upon subjective measures, such as the personality or character of the applicant.

Visualizing Organizational Identity: The History of a Capitalist Enterprise

Abstract This article examines the context in which firms reflect on their own history in order to help form their organizational identity. By undertaking research in business archives, it shows that external change is as important as an internal transition in understanding shifts in the way an organization understands its past. We trace the messages communicated internally through paintings of past chairmen and senior staff when they were displayed inside the head office of Lloyds Bank during the 1960s and 1970s. These portraits generated interest and were an effective means of non-verbal communication which provoked a discussion about the purpose, values and norms in the firm’s past, present, and future. The objects retold the story of the bank’s success as a privately owned family firm in the midst of on-going political debates inside the Labour party about the nationalization of large banking companies. With the portraits in place, they recognized the bank’s history as a capitalist enterprise. The pictures legitimized the tradition of private ownership, helped to form organizational identity, and set future obligations that would see its continuation in what was a period of potential change.

Carlen v Drury (1812): The Origins of the Internal Management Debate in Corporate Law

ABSTRACT The origins of the internal management debate and business judgment rule in Anglo-American corporate law can be traced to the landmark case of Carlen v Drury (1812). Through the use of new manuscript sources and archival material, this article offers a deeper analysis of the case than has previously been available. It reveals a number of allegations omitted by the printed reports. By placing the case within its wider historical context, the article attributes Lord Chancellor Eldon’s decision to dismiss the case to external circumstances rather than the particular merits of the shareholders’ complaints. It shows that, although Eldon did not intervene in this instance, he was, in fact, willing to interfere in disputes which related to corporate governance issues. We argue that this case should be used with caution as early courts were not as hostile to the thought of exercising judicial power as the outcome in Carlen v Drury may suggest.