Youssef Cassis

Capitals of capital : the rise and fall of international financial centeres, 1780-2009

Introduction 1. The age of private bankers, 1780-1840 2. The concentration of capital, 1840-75 3. A globalised world, 1875-1914 4. Wars and depression, 1914-45 5. Growth and regulation, 1945-80 6. Globalisation, innovation and crisis, 1980-2009 Conclusion Glossary.

Management and business in Britain and France : the age of the corporate economy

For generations, the uneasy relationship between Britain and France has captured the popular and scholarly imagination. Comparative studies between the two countries abound, from political systems to eating habits: hitherto they have not extended to business history. There is now growing interest in comparative business systems, practices, and performance. In these areas comparison with America, Germany, or Japan have taken precedence. This volume, with contributions from leading British and French experts, explores comparative developments and trends in the two countries which for so long were the guiding lights of Europe and the world. In particular it looks at three main dimensions - the family firm; education and training; and mergers and company structure. With a mixture of case-studies, sectoral analysis, and wider-ranging comparison, the book will be a useful addition to an understanding of the evolution of business organization, competitivness, and performance.

Financial Elites in Three European Centres: London, Paris, Berlin, 1880s–1930s

Bankers and financiers have rarely been included in the discussions on entrepreneurs, or on the relationship between banking and economic development. This article compares London, Paris and Berlin as financial centres between the 1880s and the 1930s. It then considers the socio-professional position of bankers and financiers in these three centres, and shows that London offered greater opportunities than Berlin for the operations of individual financiers, as well as for the survival of a banking aristocracy, Paris being somewhat in between. On the other hand, German professional bankers were integrated earlier into the financial elite than their English and French counterparts. However, these differences appear to have had a limited impact on the shaping of the banking systems of the three countries.

Private banking in Europe : rise, retreat, and resurgence

Private bankers have been defined as owner-managers of their bank, irrespective of their type of activity, which could be in any field of banking, sometimes in conjunction with another one, especially commerce in the earlier periods. Analysing the experiences of European private bankers from the early modern period to the early twenty-first century, this book starts by examining the slow emergence of specialist private bankers, largely from amongst those who provided commercial credit. This initial consideration culminates in a focus upon the roles that they played, both during the onset of the continents industrialization, and in orchestrating the finances of the emerging world economy. Its second theme is private bankings waning importance with the rise of joint-stock competitors, which became increasingly apparent in Britain during the mid-nineteenth century, and elsewhere within Europe some decades later. Lastly, attention is paid to the decline of private bankers in the twentieth century -a protracted and uneven decline, combined with the persistence and even the enduring success of some segments of the profession. It concludes with the revival of private banking in the late twentieth century as a response to the development of a new market - the management of personal wealth.

Financial crises and the balance of power in international finance, 1890–2010

Has the centre of gravity of international finance irreversibly started to shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific since the financial debacle of 2007-2008? This article discusses this highly topical question in a historical perspective, by considering previous changes in the balance of power in international finance and the role played by global financial in these changes. Particular attention is paid to the Baring Crisis of 1890, the American Panic of 1907, the financial crisis of July -August 1914, the banking crises of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the financial instability of the early 1970s and the ensuing banking failures, the International Debt Crisis of 1982, and the Japanese Banking Crisis of 1997-8. The article concludes that financial crisis, perhaps surprisingly, did not lead to clear changes in the balance of power in international finance; and that the financial debacle of 2007-8 is unlikely, in the medium-term, to fundamentally alter the current order.

City Bankers, 1890-1914.

City Bankers, 1890–1914 is a major contribution to a controversial area of economic history and to the debate about the nature of British society in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Translated here into English for the first time, it provides a detailed analysis of the banking community of London between 1890 and 1914 when the City of London was the undisputed financial centre of the world. Attention is paid to the social origins, education, careers , business interests and fortunes of its members, to the networks of relationships of its most important dynasties, as well as to the political influence of the world of banking. The analysis is based on a sample of 460 bankers at the heart of international finance and the author has used a wide range of banking archives and private papers. Business historians and economists will welcome this comprehensive study of a most important group of capitalists at the junction of the business world and aristocratic society in the Edwardian age.