Research Catalog

Title

Kleinwort, Benson : the history of two families in banking / Jehanne Wake.

Author

Wake, Jehanne.

Publication

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiv, 514 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map, portraits; 25 cm

Summary

• Kleinwort Benson is one of the most distinguished international investment banks in the City of London, becoming part of the Dresdner Bank Group in 1995. This is the story of how two families, the Kleinworts and the Bensons, emerged from medieval beginnings in Holstein and the Lake District to seek their fortunes in Hamburg, Cuba, and Liverpool, before arriving in the 1850s in London.
• There they founded two very different merchant banks, which merged in 1961 to create Kleinwort Benson Lonsdale, later Kleinwort Benson Group.
• The Kleinwort Benson story mirrors both the spectacular growth of English capital and its often turbulent side-effects. It shows how the two families survived the collapse of the Benson bank in 1875, the freezing of Kleinwort assets and business by the European financial crisis of 1931, and two World Wars, and how they established their banks as powerful City players in the postwar period. Their story is as much a human drama as a financial history.
• Brimming with generations of Kleinworts, Bensons, and the families with whom they married and formed partnerships, the book evokes their feuds and friendships, their successes and failures, set against the background of more than two hundred years of social and business history.

Subjects

• Merchant banks > Europe > History
• Kleinwort family
• Germany > Genealogy
• Merchants > Europe > Biography
• Bankers > Europe > Biography
• Kleinwort Benson Lonsdale (Firm)
• Benson family
• Great Britain > Genealogy

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [443]-467) and index.

Contents

Pt. 1. Merchants on the Move 1250-1886. 1. Early Kleinworts and Bensons. 2. Benson Merchants on the Move. 3. Alexander F. Kleinwort and the Cuban Connection. 4. Founding Fathers in the City -- Pt. 2. Banking Brothers 1850-1961. 5. The Expansion of Kleinworts. 6. The Rebuilding of Bensons. 7. Reversal and Recovery. 8. Heirs of the Establishment. 9. Kleinworts and the Urge to Merge. 10. Bensons and a Complementary Union -- Pt. 3. Kleinwort Benson 1961-1994. 11. A Modern Merchant Bank 1961-1971. 12. A Changed Landscape 1972-1994. Postscript: A European Union 1995 -- App. 1. List of Partners and Directors -- App. 2. Financial Tables -- App. 3. R. H. Benson as a Collector.

ISBN

0198282990

LCCN

96022240

OCLC

ocm34878764

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries