Hardy & Co.
Bankhaus Hardy & Co. was a major Berlin private bank that existed from 1881 to 1997 with interruption.
The Hamburg-born brothers James Nathan Hardy and Ludwig Nathan Hardy founded the Hardy & Co bank in 1881 at Behrenstrasse 2 in Berlin’s financial district . Before they were co-owners of the Hardy Nathan & Sons bank in London. In England, the Nathans had made their middle name Hardy their family name. In 1899 the bank was converted into a GmbH and Fritz Andreae was appointed one of its managing directors. The Rheinisch-Westphälische Disconto-Gesellschaft zu Aachen made a large contribution to the bank's share capital. With the takeover of the Rheinisch-Westphälische Disconto-Gesellschaft by the Dresdner Bank in 1917 they became shareholders. In 1936 the Dresdner Bank stake increased to more than 90 percent.
In 1896 the bank moved to Behrenstrasse 4 , 1906 to Markgrafenstrasse 45 and 1913 to Markgrafenstrasse 36 / Taubenstrasse 19. The latter building was designed by the architect Heinrich Rosskotten . Badly damaged by the effects of the war, it was repaired in the early 1950s and used by the GDR Academy for Social Sciences. In the late 1990s, a completely new building, the so-called margrave block, was built on the site.
In 1950 the bank in Frankfurt am Main was re-established after an attempt in Hanover had failed. In 1976 it was merged with Sloman Bank KG from Hamburg, which also belonged to the Dresdner Bank Group, to form Hardy-Sloman Bank GmbH , which in 1978 ran into a threatening situation, triggered by the need for write-downs in the Sloman Bank's loan portfolio. In 1980, just a few months before the hundredth anniversary of its existence, the traditional bank had to close its branches. The Dresdner Bank had tried in vain with capital injections to reorganize the private bank, which was taken over by the majority several years ago.
In 1991, after a few years of interruption, the bank was reopened as Hardy & Co. Privatbankiers in order to offer private banking under this brand to wealthy clients of the Dresdner Bank Group . In 1997 Hardy & Co. was integrated into Dresdner Bank under the name Dresdner Bank Private Banking .
swell
- Erich Achterberg, Victor Emanuel Preusker: Berlin banks through the ages. A century's economic record. A publication on the 75th anniversary of the Hardy & Co GmbH Frankfurt-Berlin , Darmstadt bank , 1956.
Web links
- Early documents and newspaper articles on Bankhaus Hardy & Co. in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dangerous imbalance . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1978, p. 64 ( online ).
- ↑ Private banking as a strategic business area for German banks ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
