The place of Lyon inherited from the first banking revolution of the 1750s-1850s years a solid structure of local banking houses, which were able to accompany the growth of the productive system of silk and the diversification of the emerging heavy industries. But the international deployment of...

French banking expansion in China and South-East Asia had to respect the powerful influence of British banks there. From the 1860s French merchant and banking interests had been involved in Hong Kong business because of the colonial developments in Indochina and the links between this area and...

The research program about the history of investment banking assesses through this text the legacy transmitted by the merchant banks (Haute Banque) to the Paris banking market. It first delimited the foibles which hindered them in the last quarter of the 19th century, but précised how they...

The research program about the history of investment banking gauged in this text the legacy of Jacques Laffitte, one of the initiators of modern investment banking in the years 1800-1840. It assesses the reality of his contributions and argues about their role within the process of modernisation...

Many pamphleteers in the 1900s-1920s and of short-sighted histories criticised French investments in Russia. They accused on the moment or retrospectively bankers and financiers of having involved savers’ cash (that of “France des petits” and middle classes) in the “adventure” of...