Interlocking Directorates of Banks and Industrial Companies in Hungary at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century
The article uses new archival research on the Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest and industrial companies to examine the validity of existing interpretations of interlocking directorates in Hungarian bank-industry relations at the beginning of the twentieth century. The results show that interlocking hardly depended on capital relations, which suggests that board membership had not only a control or monitoring function. The lack of regular capital relations made bank hegemony, or even a significant bank influence, not concomitant with interlocking. The Hungarian Commercial Bank was not always able to represent its own interests effectively, not even in those cases when beside the interlocks the bank was a significant owner or creditor of industrial companies. The article concludes that a more complex interpretation of interlocking directorships in Hungary is essential.
The niche in the universal banking system: the role and significance of private bankers within German industry, 1900–1933
Despite several crises and the considerable criticism they provoked, the history of the German universal banking system has come to be regarded as a 'success story'. The universal banks' triumphal march and their present dominance within the German financial sector cannot be denied. Yet, the very achievements of the three German 'great' banks may be responsible for most historical studies having focused on the development of universal banking. Such an approach automatically downplays the importance of other German banks, that is of institutions which also substantially contributed to German industrial development and the financial sector's capability. Modern historical research has badly neglected private bankers. Although attention has been paid to major nineteenth-century private bankers, the role and significance of their twentieth-century counterparts has hardly been taken into account. Their omission from scholarly consideration may be a result of merely glancing at the statistics of the quantitative development of private banking from the end of the Kaiserreich to the Federal Republic, which could suggest that the importance of this type of bank declined considerably. Whereas the waning of the private bankers' formerly dominant position cannot and shall not be controverted, recent studies of individual private bankers and empirical research into the relationship between banks and industry make it clear that a hasty review of the statistics overstates this loss of importance and, furthermore, does not take into account private bankers' actual influence in industry. This study attempts to outline the role and function of private bankers in 1 The authors would like to thank the Thyssen-Stiftung for financial assistance. 2 See most recently on this topic D. Ziegler, 'The origins of the "Macmillan Gap": comparing Britain and Germany in the early twentieth century', in P. L. Cottrell et al. (eds), Finance and Industry in the Age of the Corporate Economy: Britain and Japan (Leicester, forthcoming 1994). 3 As opposed to Daems and Chandler, who have defined 'private business' not by its legal status in terms of a partnership, but as an 'owner-operated' (in contrast to a management-operated) enterprise: A. D. Chandler and H. Daems, 'Introduction', in H. Daems and H. van der Wee (eds), Tlie Rise of Managerial Capitalism (The Hague, 1974), pp. 5-6). Kommanditisten have not been included in the sample of private bankers, although, like private bankers, they did not enjoy the privilege of
Finance and financiers in European history 1880–1960: FINANCIAL ELITES AND SOCIETY
Preface 1. Introduction: the weight of finance in European societies Y. Cassis 2. Banking and industrialisation: Rondo Cameron twenty years on Sidney Pollard and Dieter Ziegler Part I. Financial Sector and Economy: 3. The domestic commercial banks and the City of London, 1870-1939 P. L. Cottrell 4. Banks and state in France from the 1880s to the 1930s: the impossible advance of the banks Andre Gueslin 5. An overview on the role of the large German banks up to 1914 Richard Tilly 6. Banks and economic development: comments Harold James Part II. Financial Elites and Society: 7. Financial elites and British society, 1880-1950 M. J. Daunton 8. Bankers in French society 1860s-1960s Alain Plessis 9. The banker in German society, 1890 to 1930 Dolores L. Augustine 10. Financial elites and society: comments Jose Harris Part III. Financial Interests and Politics: 11. The influence of the City over British economic policy, c.1880-1960 E. H. H. Green 12. The political influence of bankers and financiers in France in the years 1850-1960 Hubert Bonin 13. Banks and banking in Germany after the First World War: strategies of defence Gerald D. Feldman 14. Banks and bankers in the German interwar depression Harold James 15. Finance and politics: comments M. J. Daunton Part IV. Finance and Financiers in Smaller European Countries: 16. Finance and financiers in Switzerland, 1880-1960 Y. Cassis and Jakob Tanner (with Fabienne Debrunner) 17. Finance and financiers in Belgium, 1880-1940 G. Kurgan vann Hentenryk 18. The political economy of banking: retail banking and corporate finance in Sweden, 1850-1939 Mats Larsson and Hakan Lindgren Part V. The Rise of Extra-European Financial Centres: 19. Money and power: the shift from Great Britain to the United States Kathleen Burk 20. The Yokohama Specie Bank during the period of the restored Gold Standard in Japan (January 1930-December 1931) Hiroaki Yamaziki 21. International financial centres in Asia, the Middle East and Australia: a historical perspective Geoffrey Jones 22. Extra-financial centres: comments Mira Wilkins.