We investigate entrepreneurial finance in an environment that was characterized by severe information problems and very weak investor protection. Despite these problems, new ventures could raise large amounts of equity and debt on the Belgian capital market between 1890 and 1914. Many of these...

Pre-World War I Belgium was characterized by a strong concentration of power in the hands of a small elite with ties to business, banks, and politics. We find that political and upper class connections were widespread amongst listed firms, especially connections with the ruling political party....

In this article, I use documents obtained from the NatWest Group archives to examine the work of Alexander Shand as a director of Parr's Bank during the period 1909-1918. A Scottish banker, Alexander Shand was recruited by the Japanese government early in his career to instruct Japanese...

As articulated by Adam Smith, one of the central issues facing companies is that managers will not run the business in the interests of its owners and will misuse resources. This ultimately has a detrimental consequence for the wealth of the nation. This survey reviews the nature and evolution...

On 28 August 1833 Parliament passed legislation that abolished slavery within the British Empire, emancipating more than 800,000 enslaved Africans. As part of the compromise that helped to secure abolition, the British government agreed a generous compensation package of £20 million to...

Using Lancashire textile industry company case studies and financial records, mainly from the period just before the First World War, the processes of growth and decline are re-examined. These are considered by reference to the nature of Lancashire entrepreneurship and the impact on...

Entrepreneurship, by its very essence, concerns the theory of the firm --- the individual enterprise --- which in turn is the essential core of micro-economics. A major theme of this study, however, is to demonstrate the interaction of micro- and macro-economic phenomena: to show how such firms...

The 'sub-agentschap' of de Nederlandsche Bank did not figurate in the Bank Act 1863, but turned out to develop as a steppingstone between a correspondent and an agency of the Bank. This article considers the history of the office at Leyden, where between 1865 and 1969 a whole lifecycle of a...

The annexation of Savoy by France fuels the issue of the fate of Banque de Savoie, because Banque de France was reluctant to share its monopoly as bank of issue, which explains the absorption of its rival in 1865. A second issue was the creation of local banking tools, embedded in regional...

Research on the practices of the moneylender, a permanent yet shadowy fixture of society, has focused on England in the early modern period. This paper, however, examines the business operations of Costantino Bogdano, a Greek moneylender active in Venice (c. 1800-44). At a time of transition in...