Banque Worms
The Banque Worms is a commercial bank in 1928 by Hippolyte Worms was founded. In 1981 it was nationalized by the socialist government under François Mitterrand , while the Worms and Co. group continued their activities. In the course of the 1990s, the participation of the Agnelli family in the group became decisive. Sequana Capital got the upper hand in the financial holding company in 2005.
history
1848-1940
Hippolyte Worms (1801–1877), employed in wholesaling and in the freight business, founded the Worms company in 1848 together with other partners, which specialized in the import of coal from England. Around 1856 the forwarding department of Worms became the most important department, which led to the fact that the company expanded its activity to an international level. The first international office was in 1869 Port Said ( Egypt opened). The company's business soon expanded to all of North Africa, particularly to areas that were under the influence of French colonial rule.
Hippolyte Worms passed the management of the company on to the next generation, to his nephew Henri Goudchaux. Under Goudchaux, especially the departments for sea freight and warehousing were expanded. After coal, the transportation of crude oil gained in importance. The Worms group expanded its business activities to include the sale of crude oil: the partner here was Marcus Samuel & Co. from 1892, and Shell in the Netherlands from 1986 . The starting points were ports in Egypt, the port of Marseille and Sudan.
Under the influence of the founder's grandson, who was also called Hippolyte Worms, and encouraged by the French government, the Worms group expanded its business to include a branch of industry and opened a shipyard near Le Havre in 1916, where, among other things, merchant ships were built. The group was itself the best customer of its ocean-going shipyards and decided to start a new company: Nouvelle Compagnie Havraise Péninsulaire (NCHP). In 1928 the "banking services Worms" (commercial bank) was founded, from which the Banque Worms emerged.
In the 1930s, the Worms Group was an important source of investment capital for French industry, including funding for the national airline, Air France . On the industrial front, Worms opened a new branch: the Société Française de Transports Pétroliers, which was supposed to secure the transport of oil over long distances.
Links to the Vichy government
The Banque Worms was closely linked to the Vichy government connected: Jacques Barnaud ( 1893 - 1926 ), head of the German-French economic relations; Pierre Pucheu , Bank employee and State Secretary for the Interior in the Vichy government from July 1941 to April 1942; Gabriel Le Roy Ladurie , director of the bank from 1940 to 1944. This close connection between the banking cadre and those responsible in Vichy, part of a technocratic government, was described by collaborative politicians such as Marcel Déat as a secret government ( synarchy ). From 1938 to 1944, the bank's assets tripled.
1945-2007
In 1948 the company's time as a coal importer ended and it was part of the founding of Antar. In the same year Hippolyte Worms expanded the company's financial activities to include an insurance service: he acquired a stake in La Préservatrice and La Foncière . La Préservatrice was founded in Brussels in 1861 and became a French company in 1877 with a network of 450 branches at the turn of the century. La Foncière, founded in 1877, was active around the world primarily in the areas of life insurance, transportation risks and fire damage. Under the control of Worms et Cie, the two companies formed the basis for the establishment of Athéna Assurances in 1989.
In the post-war reconstruction phase, and especially in the 1950s, efforts in the financing sector increased. Worms proposed full financing for industrial start-ups outside France. The banking sector was reorganized in 1964 with the establishment of Banque Worms. It became the Group's central activity after 1970. These new financial activities also included real estate marketing through the creation of a new branch in 1968, Unibail .
Industrial activities, however, decreased; the shipyard was closed in 1966 and shipping ceased in 1968. The company's remaining maritime activities were merged in 1971 under the new Worms Compagnie Navale group.
In the 1970s, Worms took over Pechelbronn , a holding company that played an important role in fundraising for the company. It was then renamed Worms et Cie on the occasion of a reorganization in 1991. In 1981, the Banque Worms was the French government nationalized . It was re-privatized and fell to UAP and finally to AXA , which had merged with UAP, but in the end Deutsche Bank took over . The remainder of the banking operations were combined in Banque Demachy and became Demachy Worms et Cie. In 1990 the Agnelli family participated in the capital of the holding company, which in 1996 became the only listed holding company. In 1997 the founding families still held 22% of the capital, 20% belonged to IFiL, the Agnelli family's holding company, and 7% belonged to AGF .
Banque Worms had a catalog of important holdings: insurance (Athéna), in the agricultural sector a 100% stake in Générale Sucrière , in the paper industry with 40% in ArjoWiggins , in ocean transport and in logistics with the Compagnie nationale de navigation . In 1997 there was an attempt to take over by Groupe Pinault , which resulted in a successful counter-takeover by the most important shareholders of Worms & Cie (founding families, IFIL and AGF). In the same year, the investment company Athéna Assurances sold its insurance division to the Assurances générales de France (AGF).
In 1999 Arjomari Prioux was taken over and incorporated into Worms & Cie. At the same time, the reorganization of Arjo Wiggins Appleton began, followed a year later by the takeover of 100% of the Arjo Wiggins Appleton (AWA) group. Carbonless Europe was incorporated into ArjoWiggins in 2004. The entire group was taken over in 2004 by the Agnelli family, who were already majority shareholders. In the same year Nicholas Clive Worms , born in 1942, former director of Christie’s France and the last member of the family to remain in the management of the holding, left his post. In 2007, Sequana Capital became the new name for Worms & Cie with a new statute.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Agoravox.fr
- ↑ Surenchère of AGF et des Agnelli pour le contrôle de Worms. Comment une OPA en inspire une autre. , Nathalie Raulin, Liberation.fr, 7 octobre 1997
- ↑ Worms & Cie: Nicholas Clive Worms laisse laisse la main à la famille Agnelli , lesechos.fr, May 17, 2004