![]() ![]() Meanwhile, Close Brothers remained staunchly independent. A few held out, but over the years they too were picked off, often for vast sums: the Flemings sold out to Chase Manhattan in 2000 for $7.7 billion Schroders went to Citigroup for £1.3 billion even Cazenove, which for years snootily positioned itself as the blue-blooded broker that would never sell out, did just that in 2004 when JP Morgan waved its chequebook. A whole generation of stockbrokers, jobbers, and what were then still called merchant bankers, cashed in their partnerships and retreated to the golf courses of Surrey. Most City firms of comparable heritage sold out before or after Big Bang in 1986. What was remarkable about Close’s firm was not so much what it did in Victorian days as what it didn’t do in the modern era. It grew steadily in size and influence, even if it never scaled the heights of global finance. Still the bank prospered, and it did fund the first railway in Alaska. ![]() His bank was founded in 1878 to provide farm mortgages in Iowa: a more promising business then than now perhaps, but still not exactly financing transcontinental railroads, which is what the big boys were up to. Compared to the Flemings or the Rothschilds, he was small fry. In any history of the City, William Brooks Close would not merit more than a footnote - indeed, in David Kynaston’s four-volume masterwork he’s not mentioned at all. Prince Harry’s legal defeat will be particularly painful The outcome of this battle will tell us whether the financial markets still have any time for tradition. ‘It isn’t fuddy-duddy at all, but it is the last of a dying breed,’ said one observer of Close. The fight promises to be a tough one, pitting one of the City’s most articulate and aggressive personalities against one of its oldest institutions. Not that such a sentiment is likely to trouble the bidder, or many of the shareholders. If it goes under, it will be the last of London’s Victorian merchant banks to disappear, and it will take a slice of City history with it. The offer has been rejected but the future of Close Brothers hangs in the balance. His plan is to fold it into his much smaller Cenkos Securities. Last month the City dealmaker Andy Stewart tabled a £1.2 billion offer for Close Brothers. Except, that is, for one small village of indomitable Brits: Close Brothers.Īnd now it too is under threat. In the last two decades, almost all the great names of what was once the Square Mile - the Flemings, the Kleinworts, the Schroders - have either been erased from the record books or reduced to nothing more than a couple of oil paintings and a brass plate inside a giant American, German or Swiss investment bank. ![]() Matthew Lynn says London’s last 19th-century merchant bank, Close Brothers, is under threat of takeover by one of the modern breed of aggressive City traders, Andy StewartĪnyone approaching the headquarters of Close Brothers just off Broadgate in the heart of the City may be reminded of the words that open the Asterix books, about how one small village of indomitable Gauls held out against the invading Romans. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |