Otto Ernst Niemeyer

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Sir Otto Ernst Niemeyer (before Feb. 1927)

Sir Otto Ernst Niemeyer (born November 23, 1883 in Streatham Hill , London , † February 6, 1971 in Lindfield , Sussex ) was a British civil servant, bank manager and internationally recognized financial expert at the Bank of England .

Niemeyer received his notoriety by his travels as a financial expert on behalf of the British government and the Bank of England in the 1930s, the times of the Great Depression . His mission was to help the governments of other countries to cope with their financial problems and thus to contribute to the stabilization of the international financial system and to restore a more secure basis for the world economy .

Act

Before the Great Depression

Otto Ernst Niemeyer was born in London in 1883. His name reveals German ancestry, but unfortunately nothing is known about his childhood or his parents' house. He attended St Paul's School in Barnes in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and later studied in the Balliol College of Oxford University .

After graduating in 1906, at the age of 23, he entered the civil service as a tax clerk and became an assistant in a management position at the British Treasury . As early as 1912 he took on a management position, rose to deputy ministerial director in 1919 , and then only one year later he became the main deputy ministerial director . In 1921 he followed the appointment of deputy financial auditor and was finally appointed financial auditor of the Treasury in 1922, a key position which he held until 1927. At the same time as this appointment, he became a member of the Finance Commission of the League of Nations , the forerunner of the United Nations ( UN ) , in 1922 . His membership there ended in 1937.

In 1927, Niemeyer moved from the Treasury as a consultant to the Bank of England, which had to give up its independence in 1914 with the start of the First World War and from then on was more under the control of the British government and became its instrument. Niemeyer, together with Sir Basil Phillott Blackett and Sir Josiah Charles Stamp, was supposed to ensure control of the bank with the move to the bank.

1928 took Niemeyer the post of Director of the National Bank of Egypt and helped about its function the interests of Great Britain in the actually already in the independence (1922) dismissed Egypt to secure. He headed the bank until 1950, two years before the overthrow and proclamation of the Republic of Egypt . Also in 1928 he became director of the Banque des Pays de l'Europe Central.

Travel as a financial expert

With the crash on Wall Street in October 1929, Niemeyer's job changed abruptly. As a financial expert at the Bank of England, he traveled to Australia for four months on July 14, 1930, together with Professor Theodore Emanuel Guggenheim Gregory of the London School of Economics , at the alleged invitation of then Prime Minister James Scullin . Australia was bankrupt and owed England, the Treasury Secretary had resigned and unemployment was rising rapidly. At the time, it looked more like Niemeyer would be sent to Australia by the British government to solve the Dominion 's problems. Niemeyer criticized the Australian government for missing cost-cutting programs. The conflicts were correspondingly large, and in the public dispute with the recognized Australian economist Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin Niemeyer had to survive. His mission was unsuccessful. The Australian Labor Party (ALP), which came under government responsibility at the beginning of the Wall Street crash , was unable to endorse its solution of countering the economic crisis with a 10 percent wage cut. He was certain of the resistance of the left political parties. By Jack Lang , the Prime Minister of New South Wales , he got for his radical approach, therefore the nickname "Sir Rotter" (bastard) missed.

In New Zealand , Niemeyer received a more friendly welcome. In August and September 1930 he moved to the islands. His mission was clearer than in Australia. He should questions of the banking system , the exchange rate stability and the currency reserves held by commercial banks, clarify and prepare a report to it. In May 1931 the so-called Niemeyer Report was published. The report recommended the creation of a central bank the size of New Zealand that would issue banknotes , control exchange rates and the stability of money, and build currency reserves. The central bank should be free and independent of political influences. After some resistance, the Reserve Bank Act 1933 finally created the legal basis for a central bank in New Zealand in November 1933 . The Reserve Bank of New Zealand began operations on August 1, 1934. Since then, Niemeyer has enjoyed a reputation in New Zealand, unlike Australia .

After New Zealand, Niemeyer's visit to Brazil in February 1931 followed , where the press did not receive him particularly warmly. Egypt , Romania and Greece were to follow, until at the end of 1932 Niemeyer was invited to Argentina by the Banco de la Nación with the approval of the Argentine government . There, too, he should investigate the financial situation and the situation of the country's banks. He made his last advisory trips to India in 1936 and to Chongqing (Tschungking) in China in October 1941 to help with general financial problems and the stabilization of the Chinese dollar .

Bank manager

Niemeyer's actual career as a bank manager began in 1932. After the resignation of Sir Charles Addis , one of the directors of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which had emerged in 1930 from the JP Morgan-dominated Reparations Committee, Otto Niemeyer became his in June 1932 Successor appointed. The press was full of praise for this change, since the public already trusted Niemeyer to solve the huge problems of the financial world that were revealed by the global economic crisis. In 1937 the bank's board of directors decided to transfer the chairmanship of the board of directors to Niemeyer for a period of three years.

In April 1938 Otto Niemeyer was elected director to the board of the Bank of England, a position he held until he retired in February 1952. As director of the BIS he did not leave until 1965, after 33 years of uninterrupted work for the bank and at the age of 82.

In addition to his work as a bank manager, he took over the post of treasurer in the National Association for Mental Health in February 1947 , was chairman of the Committee of British Long-Term and Medium-Term Creditors of Germany , and from 1941 to 1951 chairman of the Governors of the London School of Economics and was a member of the Council of Foreign Bondholders (CFB) from 1935 to 1965 .

Otto Ernst Niemeyer died on February 6, 1971 at his Sussex home at the age of 87.

Awards

Niemeyer was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) on June 3, 1924 . He belonged to the knighthood and was allowed to use the name suffix "Sir". Furthermore, he was on June 3, 1927 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Picture Gallery - League of Nations - Some of the principal members of the Financial Committee of the League of Nations . In: The Times . Issue 44494 . London February 1, 1927, p.  xiii Col B (English).
  2. ↑ a b c International Herald Tribune , Paris, February 8, 1971
  3. ↑ Jürgen Nautz (ed.): Negotiators of trust. From the posthumous writings of Section Head Dr. Richard Schüller , Publishing House for History and Politics, Vienna 1990, p. 350.
  4. ^ Treasury: Papers of Sir Otto Niemeyer - The National Archives (UK) The Catalog (accessed July 31, 2009)
  5. ↑ Valerio Cerretano, The Treasury, Britain's post-war reconstruction and the industrial intervention of the Bank of England, 1921-1929 , Paris School of Economics, Working Paper 2007-22
  6. ^ William Coleman, Giblin's platoon: the trials and triumph of the economist in Australian public life. , ANU E Press, Canberra, 2006. ISBN 1-920942-49-1
  7. ^ Donald J. Markwell, Keynes and Australia - Research Discussion Paper , Reserve Bank of Australia, June 2000
  8. ^ Financial Dictionary - Niemeyer statement . ANZ - Bank , archived from the original on August 19, 2008 ; accessed on January 20, 2016 (English, original website no longer available).
  9. ^ Matthew Wright, The policy origins of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand , Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Bulletin, Vol. 69, no. September 3, 2006
  10. ↑ Sir Otto Niemeyer . In: The Canberra Times . Canberra February 16, 1931, p.  1 (English, online [accessed May 7, 2019]).
  11. ^ The Times , London, November 28, 1932
  12. ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung , Zurich, December 3, 1932
  13. ^ The Financial News , London, October 17, 1941
  14. ^ Deutsche Bergwerkzeitung , Düsseldorf, June 4, 1932
  15. ↑ Kölnische Zeitung , Cologne, March 8, 1937
  16. ^ Deutsche Bergwerkzeitung , Düsseldorf, April 7, 1938
  17. ^ The Times , London, February 28, 1952
  18. ↑ a b The Times , London, April 1, 1965
  19. ^ The British Journal of Nursing , February 1947
  20. ^ The Times , London, April 27, 1956
  21. ↑ a b Knights and Dames: MIG-OS at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
personal data
SURNAME Niemeyer, Otto Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Niemeyer, Sir Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British civil servant, banker and internationally recognized financial expert with the Bank of England
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Streatham Hill , London
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1971
Place of death Lindfield , Sussex