Coutts & Co
| Coutts & Co | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Country |
 United Kingdom
|
| Seat | London |
| legal form | |
| BIC | COUTGB31 |
| founding | 1692 |
| Website | www.coutts.com |
| Business data | |
| Total assets | CHF 21.835 billion (December 31, 2010) |
| management | |
| Corporate management |
Michael Morley (CEO UK), William Waldegrave, Baron Waldegrave of North Hill (Chairman), Alexander Classen (CEO CH), David Douglas-Home, 15th Earl of Home ( Chairman of the Board - Switzerland) |
Coutts & Co (2004–2007 Coutts Bank von Ernst AG , 2007–2011 RBS Coutts Bank ) is a British private bank . It was founded in 1692 by the Scotsman John Campbell of Lundie. The headquarters are in London, 440 Strand . The business is based on three pillars: investment (including portfolio management , investment advice and fund management), trust, fiduciary and banking services. Coutts is now part of the Wealth Division of the Royal Bank of Scotland . The Coutts is the private bank of the British Queen Elizabeth II. Many millionaires also belong to the customer base, so that in 2011 the market share among the wealthy in the United Kingdom was 7 percent.
history
,_Duchess_of_St_Albans_by_Sir_William_Beechey.jpg)
In 1692, today's corporation Coutts was founded under the name Campbells Bank in London. John Campbell was a goldsmith banker from Scotland. He worked as a goldsmith and traded in precious stones, which he bought, stored and resold for his customers. Many of his customers were his countrymen, including his clan chief , the powerful Duke of Argyll . Already at the time of John Campell, the house offered comprehensive banking services and an extremely close and successful cooperation with the aristocracy began. Campbell enjoyed royal patronage when Queen Anne commissioned him to make the collars and badges of the Order of the Thistle . In 1708, Campbell took on another Scottish goldsmith, George Middleton, as a partner. John Campbell died in 1712, and that year Middleton married the founder's daughter, Mary. Middleton continued his work as a goldsmith and worked for the future King George II. In the following years the activities shifted more and more from goldsmithing to banking, so that at some point they no longer produced their own valuables, but these were still safe for customers were kept.
Especially under Thomas Coutts, who took over the fortunes of the bank in 1775 and ran it for over 50 years, business with the English aristocracy flourished. So was George III. (1738–1820), King of Great Britain and Ireland, his most famous customer, who even entrusted the bank with the royal private treasury. At that time, customers included such famous personalities as the Duke of Wellington or Lord Nelson's mistress , Emma Lady Hamilton . The name Coutts first appeared in the bank's name in 1755. James Coutts, a Scottish banker, entered into a partnership with Campbell through his marriage to Mary Peagrum, the founder's granddaughter. When Campbell died in 1760, James Coutts brought in his youngest brother, Thomas, and in 1761 the bank became known as James & Thomas Coutts . When James Coutts retired from the bank in 1775, the bank changed its name to Thomas Coutts & Company , which remained until Thomas' death in 1822. The long reign of George III. was a time of great political, social and economic change. Coutts' clients were closely linked to events such as the American Revolutionary War , the French Revolution , the Napoleonic Wars, and the opening up of India and the Far East to the British Empire. When Thomas Coutts died in 1822 went his assets and a 50 -% - stake in the bank to his second wife, Harriot Coutts , and the name of the bank changed in Coutts . As a senior partner, Harriot Coutts (later Duchess of St Albans) took an active interest in banking. She decided that her inheritance should pass to a single family member, so in 1837 Angela Burdett , then the youngest of Thomas Coutts' grandchildren, inherited Harriott's share in the trust. Harriot's last will also stipulated that Angela had to take the name Coutts and forbade her from marrying a foreigner or interfering in the running of the company.
Decisive expansion steps followed in the 20th century. As part of a merger, Coutts came to the NatWest Group in 1969 and became their asset management arm with branches in London and a further nine branches in England. In 2000, the hostile takeover of the NatWest Group by the Royal Bank of Scotland , one of the world's largest banking groups with close ties to the British Crown, took place. With this, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) suddenly gained access to the American and continental European markets, in which it had not been strongly represented until then. "Coutts Bank (Schweiz) AG" with its headquarters in Zurich was responsible for operations on the European continent, with branches in North and South America, Singapore and Hong Kong as well as offshore companies, so-called trust factories on the British Isles of Jersey and Cayman - they formed the core of Coutts International.
In 2003 Coutts acquired the Swiss Bank von Ernst & Cie AG , founded in 1869 by the Bernese aristocrat Vinzenz Niklaus von Ernst as a general partnership, through the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, (The Bank von Ernst is not to be confused with the bank founded by the same family in 1892 Armand von Ernst , which was taken over by the Swiss Bank Corporation in 1976 and sold by UBS together with its other private banks to Julius Baer in 2006. ) Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank sold its Swiss subsidiary Bank von Ernst & Cie AG for 500 million Swiss francs. Since November 1, 2011, “Coutts Bank (Schweiz) AG” has been operating under its new name “Coutts & Co AG” after a name change. It was the most important within the Coutts Group, which in 2003 managed assets of £ 36 billion Private banking unit.
The parent company, RBS, was saved from collapse by the government from 2007 during the financial crisis , and since then RBS and its distinguished subsidiary Coutts have been owned by the British state to more than 80 percent. In 2012 the British financial regulator FSA attacked the bank sharply: Coutts took “risks” to help criminals and despots of the world with money laundering - for example rulers in Libya, Syria or Zimbabwe. Coutts had to pay a fine of ten million euros.
On May 20, 2014, two containers with documents about so-called offshore accounts from the Cayman Islands, which were to be transported from Hamburg to Geneva, were seized in the Port of Hamburg. The Cayman Islands are considered a tax haven and a discreet hiding place for the super-rich and criminals from all over the world and have a reputation for being a location for money laundering and terrorist financing. The German Ministry of Finance did not comment, the public prosecutor and tax investigators in Düsseldorf were dealt with the case. There they are investigating German Coutts customers: In the summer of 2012, North Rhine-Westphalia bought a tax CD that contained the names and account details of around 1200 German Coutts customers who allegedly evaded taxes, some on a large scale. Coutts asked for the documents back, saying that the Swiss Coutts Bank AG was not the owner of Coutts Cayman. Coutts Cayman is a separate legal entity. The confiscation was made public by the news magazine Focus a month later on June 21, 2014, according to which the customs officers found various documents from the Saudi Arabian Bin Laden family - the best-known member of which is the killed terrorist Osama bin Laden , the founder and leader of the group al-Qaeda , who, among other things, planned the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 .
NRW Finance Minister Norbert Walter-Borjans saw the confiscation as an opportunity to put more pressure on in the fight against international tax evasion and urged further steps. This includes the evaluation of references to tax haven transactions through offshore leaks or offered tax evaders CDs as well as file finds in containers.
Web links
- Website of the Coutts & Co AG
- Barbara Braun-Bucher: Ernst [von]. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry in the BIC directory at SWIFT
- ↑ Mark Böschen: Private banks: In the name of the Queen. In: manager-magazin.de. November 15, 2011. Retrieved November 9, 2017 .
- ↑ Our History
- ↑ Chronology of the BBC on the takeover of NatWest (English)
- ↑ HVB sells bank von Ernst to Coutts , NZZ of October 10, 2003
- ↑ Discovery in the Port of Hamburg , Focus, June 21, 2014
- ↑ "Pirates of the Caribbean", Die Welt, Issue 25, June 22, 201, page 1
- ↑ Documents discovered in the port of Hamburg - North Rhine-Westphalia declares war on tax havens , rp-online.de of June 23, 2014
Coordinates: 47 ° 22 '17.5 " N , 8 ° 31' 47.1" E ; CH1903: 682,410 / 247315