Société Générale du Crédit Mobilier
The Société générale de Crédit Mobilier , shortly Crédit Mobilier , a 1852-1870 was existing French bank . It was founded on November 18, 1852 with the benevolent support of President Louis Napoleon , who a few weeks later proclaimed himself emperor. The brothers Émile Pereire and Isaac Pereire appeared as proponents . The basic idea of Crédit Mobilier was to collect citizens' capital on a broad basis and to use it profitably for productive investments (especially in railway construction, insurance and urban infrastructures, etc.). The Crédit Mobilier exerted a modernizing influence on the European financial system and can therefore be regarded as a forerunner of the modern joint stock banks.
history
Both Louis Napoleon and the Péreire brothers were influenced by the teachings of the economic theorist Henri de Saint-Simon , who placed particular emphasis on the promotion of industrial development and the centralization of the credit system. The previous high finance, which mainly looked after the state credit (such as the Rothschild house ), viewed these efforts with suspicion. The Crédit Mobilier achieved tremendous success in the first years of the Second Empire, not least thanks to the guarantees of the government. A gigantic conglomerate was created.
The bank financed railway and industrial projects in France, Spain and the Danube Monarchy, but also the Paris World Exhibitions , public transport with horse-drawn buses and gas lighting. Admittedly, in view of these initial successes, speculation with the bank's papers also overheated.
In 1856, the Crédit Mobilier share, with a nominal value of 500 francs, peaked at 2000 francs. The overly stretched nature of the activities of the Crédit Mobilier and its dangerous proximity to the risky world power politics of Napoleon III. however, led to its decline. The great crisis began in 1867. After the Crédit mobilier failed to speculate in Austrian government bonds, which fell sharply after the military defeat at Königgrätz in 1866, the bank's shares were only traded at less than 10 percent of their maximum value in 1867. But there was an orderly liquidation.
literature
- Pierer's Universal Lexikon, Volume 4., Altenburg 1858, pp. 513-515, on the web at (share auction November 2, 2009) and at http://www.zeno.org
Web links
- Representation of the global economic background
- On the founding history of Crédit mobilier. In: Adolf Beer: History of World Trade in the Nineteenth Century , Volume 1, p. 225
- Brief description in the French National Archives
- To the Crédit mobilier and to the rival establishment of the Austrian Credititanstalt by the House of Rothschild
- Proudhon's anti-Semitism and the Péreires