Pub Date : 2021-02-22DOI: 10.1017/S0968565021000019
Eoin Drea, F. Barry
Joseph Brennan, as secretary of the Irish Department of Finance (1923–7) and chair of the Irish Currency Commission (1927–43), was a pivotal influence on Irish banking and currency affairs. Yet, within the existing literature, his adherence to conservative British norms is seen as providing a ‘bleak prescription’ for the Irish economy. However, such a view ignores the fact that Brennan was far from dogmatic on banking and currency issues and underplays his incrementalist, and often internationalist, approach to the development of Irish monetary institutions. Brennan's actions up to the early 1940s were based on the realities of Ireland's slowly receding economic and intellectual dependency on Britain, a ‘dependency’ often misrepresented in the existing literature as a more primitive, pre-Keynesian, conservative approach. However, rather than acting as a restraining influence on Irish economic development, the policies Brennan advocated enabled Ireland to avoid the instability associated with many smaller, emerging nation states in the 1920s and 1930s. The focus on continuity – which guaranteed currency and banking stability – represented the realities of Ireland's reliance on the sluggish British economy in the decades after independence. Brennan's achievement, in helping to sustain banking and currency stability notwithstanding economic uncertainty, a fragile political environment (and suspicious banking interests), deserves wider acknowledgement.
{"title":"A reappraisal of Joseph Brennan and the achievements of Irish banking and currency policy 1922–1943","authors":"Eoin Drea, F. Barry","doi":"10.1017/S0968565021000019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565021000019","url":null,"abstract":"Joseph Brennan, as secretary of the Irish Department of Finance (1923–7) and chair of the Irish Currency Commission (1927–43), was a pivotal influence on Irish banking and currency affairs. Yet, within the existing literature, his adherence to conservative British norms is seen as providing a ‘bleak prescription’ for the Irish economy. However, such a view ignores the fact that Brennan was far from dogmatic on banking and currency issues and underplays his incrementalist, and often internationalist, approach to the development of Irish monetary institutions. Brennan's actions up to the early 1940s were based on the realities of Ireland's slowly receding economic and intellectual dependency on Britain, a ‘dependency’ often misrepresented in the existing literature as a more primitive, pre-Keynesian, conservative approach. However, rather than acting as a restraining influence on Irish economic development, the policies Brennan advocated enabled Ireland to avoid the instability associated with many smaller, emerging nation states in the 1920s and 1930s. The focus on continuity – which guaranteed currency and banking stability – represented the realities of Ireland's reliance on the sluggish British economy in the decades after independence. Brennan's achievement, in helping to sustain banking and currency stability notwithstanding economic uncertainty, a fragile political environment (and suspicious banking interests), deserves wider acknowledgement.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"45 - 66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0968565021000019","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47983867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-14DOI: 10.1017/S096856502000013X
Tijn van Beurden, J. Jonker
Analysing Curaçao as an offshore financial centre from its inception to its gradual decline, we find that it originated and evolved in close concert with the demand for such services from Western countries. Dutch banks and multinationals spearheaded the creation of institutions on the island facilitating tax avoidance. In this they were aided and abetted by their government, which firmly supported the Antilles in getting access to bilateral tax treaties, notably the one with the United States. Until the mid 1980s Curaçao flourished, but then found it increasingly difficult to keep a competitive advantage over other offshore centres. Meanwhile the Curaçao connection had enabled the Netherlands to turn itself into a hub for international revenue flows that today still feed both Dutch tax income and specialised financial, legal and accounting services.
{"title":"A perfect symbiosis: Curaçao, the Netherlands and financial offshore services, 1951–2013","authors":"Tijn van Beurden, J. Jonker","doi":"10.1017/S096856502000013X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S096856502000013X","url":null,"abstract":"Analysing Curaçao as an offshore financial centre from its inception to its gradual decline, we find that it originated and evolved in close concert with the demand for such services from Western countries. Dutch banks and multinationals spearheaded the creation of institutions on the island facilitating tax avoidance. In this they were aided and abetted by their government, which firmly supported the Antilles in getting access to bilateral tax treaties, notably the one with the United States. Until the mid 1980s Curaçao flourished, but then found it increasingly difficult to keep a competitive advantage over other offshore centres. Meanwhile the Curaçao connection had enabled the Netherlands to turn itself into a hub for international revenue flows that today still feed both Dutch tax income and specialised financial, legal and accounting services.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"28 1","pages":"67 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S096856502000013X","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49583028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1017/s0968565020000232
{"title":"FHR volume 27 issue 3 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0968565020000232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0968565020000232","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"27 1","pages":"f1 - f2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/s0968565020000232","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42192975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1017/s0968565020000244
{"title":"FHR volume 27 issue 3 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0968565020000244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0968565020000244","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":" ","pages":"b1 - b2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/s0968565020000244","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44634834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1017/S0968565020000220
Maria Stella Chiaruttini
After Southern Italy became part of a new, national state in 1860, its financial sector was radically transformed under Piedmontese influence. This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the aggressive penetration of a Northern credit institution, the future Bank of Italy, into the South following unification harmed the local banking system and highlights instead its transformative role in modernising and deepening regional credit markets. On the basis of new statistics, banking and political records, this contribution shows that the introduction of ‘foreign’ banking from Northern Italy under the auspices of a national, constitutional government resulted in a financial revolution and a democratisation of credit supply to the advantage of the whole South. Public banking under the Bourbons had privileged the needs of an absolute government over those of the private economy and of the capital city over those of the rest of the country, retarding financial development. Credit undersupply and regional fragmentation could only be overcome through the integration of the South within a larger Italian market, in which, however, the lion's share went to a predominantly Northern institution.
{"title":"Woe to the vanquished? State, ‘foreign’ banking and financial development in Southern Italy in the nineteenth century","authors":"Maria Stella Chiaruttini","doi":"10.1017/S0968565020000220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565020000220","url":null,"abstract":"After Southern Italy became part of a new, national state in 1860, its financial sector was radically transformed under Piedmontese influence. This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the aggressive penetration of a Northern credit institution, the future Bank of Italy, into the South following unification harmed the local banking system and highlights instead its transformative role in modernising and deepening regional credit markets. On the basis of new statistics, banking and political records, this contribution shows that the introduction of ‘foreign’ banking from Northern Italy under the auspices of a national, constitutional government resulted in a financial revolution and a democratisation of credit supply to the advantage of the whole South. Public banking under the Bourbons had privileged the needs of an absolute government over those of the private economy and of the capital city over those of the rest of the country, retarding financial development. Credit undersupply and regional fragmentation could only be overcome through the integration of the South within a larger Italian market, in which, however, the lion's share went to a predominantly Northern institution.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"27 1","pages":"340 - 360"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0968565020000220","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47120831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-23DOI: 10.1017/S0968565020000190
Juan Huitzilihuitl Flores Zendejas
This article analyses the reasons why most Latin American governments frequently defaulted on their debts during the nineteenth century. Contrary to previous works, which focused on domestic factors, I argue that supply-side factors were equally important. The regulatory framework at the London Stock Exchange prevented defaulting governments from having access to the capital market. Therefore, the implicit incentive for underwriting banks and governments was to accelerate negotiations with bondholders, particularly during periods of high liquidity. Frequently, however, settlements were short-lived. In contrast, certain merchant banks opted to delay or refuse a settlement if they judged that the risk of a renewed default was too high. In such cases, even if negotiations were extended, the final agreements were more often respected, allowing governments to improve their repayment record.
{"title":"Explaining Latin America's persistent defaults: an analysis of the debtor–creditor relations in London, 1822–1914","authors":"Juan Huitzilihuitl Flores Zendejas","doi":"10.1017/S0968565020000190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565020000190","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the reasons why most Latin American governments frequently defaulted on their debts during the nineteenth century. Contrary to previous works, which focused on domestic factors, I argue that supply-side factors were equally important. The regulatory framework at the London Stock Exchange prevented defaulting governments from having access to the capital market. Therefore, the implicit incentive for underwriting banks and governments was to accelerate negotiations with bondholders, particularly during periods of high liquidity. Frequently, however, settlements were short-lived. In contrast, certain merchant banks opted to delay or refuse a settlement if they judged that the risk of a renewed default was too high. In such cases, even if negotiations were extended, the final agreements were more often respected, allowing governments to improve their repayment record.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"27 1","pages":"319 - 339"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0968565020000190","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42335508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-18DOI: 10.1017/S0968565020000153
C. Altamura, M. Daunton
This special issue celebrates the career of Youssef Cassis. The introduction will outline his major contributions from his initial work on social characteristics of the financiers of the City of London, and their relationship with landed aristocrats and industry, through his analysis of a succession of financial centres, the comparative study of big business, the relationship between finance and politics, to his new project on the memory of financial crises. Then, we will draw on Youssef's mode of analysis to consider some of the more pressing issues in the era since the global financial crisis and the impact of Covid-19. We will consider the role of central banks, the challenge of fintech, the impact of low interest rates on inequality, savings and debt, and the potential shift in financial centres and reserve currencies with the rise of China. We will conclude by arguing that the mode of analysis developed by Cassis over his long and productive career has never been more pertinent.
{"title":"Finance, financiers and financial centres: a special issue in honour of Youssef Cassis Introduction","authors":"C. Altamura, M. Daunton","doi":"10.1017/S0968565020000153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565020000153","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue celebrates the career of Youssef Cassis. The introduction will outline his major contributions from his initial work on social characteristics of the financiers of the City of London, and their relationship with landed aristocrats and industry, through his analysis of a succession of financial centres, the comparative study of big business, the relationship between finance and politics, to his new project on the memory of financial crises. Then, we will draw on Youssef's mode of analysis to consider some of the more pressing issues in the era since the global financial crisis and the impact of Covid-19. We will consider the role of central banks, the challenge of fintech, the impact of low interest rates on inequality, savings and debt, and the potential shift in financial centres and reserve currencies with the rise of China. We will conclude by arguing that the mode of analysis developed by Cassis over his long and productive career has never been more pertinent.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"27 1","pages":"283 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0968565020000153","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42918820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-10DOI: 10.1017/S0968565020000219
F. Amatori
The Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI), a state-controlled holding company, was founded in 1933. Its original mission was to prevent the collapse of Italy's largest universal banks by taking over their huge industrial shareholdings. As a consequence, the historiography traditionally associates it with the concept of ‘entrepreneurial state’. This article aims to challenge this interpretation by focusing on the ideas and actions of three prominent figures: Alberto Beneduce, the IRI's first chairman; Donato Menichella, Beneduce's right-hand man who became governor of the Bank of Italy after World War II; and Pasquale Saraceno, a technocrat who spent his entire career as one of the IRI's top managers. Beneduce and Menichella regarded the IRI as a financial intermediary open to private shareholders. To Saraceno, by contrast, the IRI was an expression of a Catholic ideology that entrusted to the state the mission of promoting the industrialization of the south. This view, which aimed at reducing regional inequalities in order to complete the country's political unification, prevailed only in the second half of the 1950s. By trying to blend profit maximization with political and social goals, this strategy sowed the seeds of the IRI's decline and eventual demise.
{"title":"IRI: financial intermediary or entrepreneurial state?","authors":"F. Amatori","doi":"10.1017/S0968565020000219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565020000219","url":null,"abstract":"The Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI), a state-controlled holding company, was founded in 1933. Its original mission was to prevent the collapse of Italy's largest universal banks by taking over their huge industrial shareholdings. As a consequence, the historiography traditionally associates it with the concept of ‘entrepreneurial state’. This article aims to challenge this interpretation by focusing on the ideas and actions of three prominent figures: Alberto Beneduce, the IRI's first chairman; Donato Menichella, Beneduce's right-hand man who became governor of the Bank of Italy after World War II; and Pasquale Saraceno, a technocrat who spent his entire career as one of the IRI's top managers. Beneduce and Menichella regarded the IRI as a financial intermediary open to private shareholders. To Saraceno, by contrast, the IRI was an expression of a Catholic ideology that entrusted to the state the mission of promoting the industrialization of the south. This view, which aimed at reducing regional inequalities in order to complete the country's political unification, prevailed only in the second half of the 1950s. By trying to blend profit maximization with political and social goals, this strategy sowed the seeds of the IRI's decline and eventual demise.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"27 1","pages":"436 - 448"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0968565020000219","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48640048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-10DOI: 10.1017/S0968565020000207
Alexis Drach
The City of London has long attracted much academic and popular attention. However, little research has been done on the relationship between the City and the European Economic Community in the 1970s and 1980s, despite the accession of the United Kingdom in 1973. Based on archival material from central and commercial banks in the UK and France, this article explores the relationship between the City and the EEC, from the accession of the UK to the EEC in 1973 to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which was meant to be the year of the completion of the single financial market. The article explores two areas: the influence of the City on EEC financial regulation, and how this influence was exerted. It pays particular attention to two committees chaired by the Bank of England, the City Liaison Committee and the City EEC Liaison Committee, and to British banks. The article argues that if the EEC played a part in the formalisation of British banking regulation, the City also played a key role in shaping EEC plans for financial regulation.
{"title":"From gentlemanly capitalism to lobbying capitalism: the City and the EEC, 1972–1992","authors":"Alexis Drach","doi":"10.1017/S0968565020000207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565020000207","url":null,"abstract":"The City of London has long attracted much academic and popular attention. However, little research has been done on the relationship between the City and the European Economic Community in the 1970s and 1980s, despite the accession of the United Kingdom in 1973. Based on archival material from central and commercial banks in the UK and France, this article explores the relationship between the City and the EEC, from the accession of the UK to the EEC in 1973 to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which was meant to be the year of the completion of the single financial market. The article explores two areas: the influence of the City on EEC financial regulation, and how this influence was exerted. It pays particular attention to two committees chaired by the Bank of England, the City Liaison Committee and the City EEC Liaison Committee, and to British banks. The article argues that if the EEC played a part in the formalisation of British banking regulation, the City also played a key role in shaping EEC plans for financial regulation.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"27 1","pages":"376 - 396"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0968565020000207","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48237530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-10DOI: 10.1017/S0968565020000189
C. Schenk
From the 1970s to the 1990s there was a revolution in international financial markets, which combined the processes of financialisation and globalisation. Deregulation and financial innovation were the two underlying forces that facilitated this transformation. At the same time, distinctive national characteristics of banking structures and cultures influenced the way that financial globalisation affected the geographic distribution of financial activity. This article addresses these seismic shifts through three perspectives: changes in regulation and the geographic pattern of international banking activity, reform of the main stock markets in New York and London and the rise of financial conglomerates. It identifies complementarity as well as competition among international financial centres.
{"title":"Regulatory foundations of financialisation: May Day, Big Bang and international banking, 1975–1990","authors":"C. Schenk","doi":"10.1017/S0968565020000189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0968565020000189","url":null,"abstract":"From the 1970s to the 1990s there was a revolution in international financial markets, which combined the processes of financialisation and globalisation. Deregulation and financial innovation were the two underlying forces that facilitated this transformation. At the same time, distinctive national characteristics of banking structures and cultures influenced the way that financial globalisation affected the geographic distribution of financial activity. This article addresses these seismic shifts through three perspectives: changes in regulation and the geographic pattern of international banking activity, reform of the main stock markets in New York and London and the rise of financial conglomerates. It identifies complementarity as well as competition among international financial centres.","PeriodicalId":44063,"journal":{"name":"Financial History Review","volume":"27 1","pages":"397 - 417"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0968565020000189","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49573382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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