This fascinating chronicle of the world's great financial families offers candid profiles of the personalities behind seven legendary banking houses: Hambros, which now survives in name only; Barings, the oldest British banking dynasty; the Rothschilds, who amassed the largest private fortune in modern history; the Warburgs, a German dynasty of Venetian origin dating from the sixteenth century; the venerable Hermann Josef Abs, long-time chairman of Deutsche Bank; Lehman Brothers, formerly the oldest continuing partnership in American investing; and the eccentric and culturally savant financier Raffaele Mattioli, who headed Banca Commerciale Italiana. Focusing on figures of late-nineteenth-century London, this chronicle marks the distinctions between the cloistered Old World aristocracy and the rise of the high-stakes investors of Wall Street. Written by a longtime correspondent for the New Yorker, this fascinating account of daring financial adventures and their merchant banker orchestrators provides a wealth of context for understanding the evolution of modern investment banking. A new Foreword has been written specially for this edition by Christopher Kobrak, Wilson/Currie Chair of Canadian Business and Financial History at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Dover (2014) republication of the edition originally published by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1966. See every Dover book in print at www.doverpublications.com

"This book examines the ascendancy and decline of the British merchant banking industry over the last 200 years. It illustrates the central role these institutions played in the growth and development of the global and domestic economy and assesses their prospects and influence in a continuously changing environment." "The origins, ascendancy, triumphs, contributions, failures and decline of these institutions are analysed with reference to the external forces which shape them, from the dawn of merchant banking in the 18th century, to the peak years of dominance in the 19th century, and into the challenging War and post-War years when power and influence were lost to European universal banks and US global financial conglomerates."--BOOK JACKET.

A biography of the powerful and successful merchant.

1 Merchant Banking And Financial Services: Meaning, Scope, Participants And Instruments 2 Public Issue Management And Regulatios 3 Services Offered By Merchant Bankers 4 Financial Services: Part I 5 Financial Services: Part Ii Case Studies

From the author of "Player Manager" comes a controversial insider's look at the secret world of investment banking.

From the end of the nineteenth century until the onset of the Great Depression, Wall Street embarked on a stunning, unprecedented, and often bloody period of international expansion in the Caribbean. A host of financial entities sought to control banking, trade, and finance in the region. In the process, they not only trampled local sovereignty, grappled with domestic banking regulation, and backed US imperialism—but they also set the model for bad behavior by banks, visible still today. In Bankers and Empire, Peter James Hudson tells the provocative story of this period, taking a close look at both the institutions and individuals who defined this era of American capitalism in the West Indies. Whether in Wall Street minstrel shows or in dubious practices across the Caribbean, the behavior of the banks was deeply conditioned by bankers’ racial views and prejudices. Drawing deeply on a broad range of sources, Hudson reveals that the banks’ experimental practices and projects in the Caribbean often led to embarrassing failure, and, eventually, literal erasure from the archives.