Société anonyme | |
Industry | Banking |
Predecessor |
|
Successor | BNP Paribas |
Founded | January 27, 1872 |
Founder | Henri Bamberger, Adolphe-Ernest Fould, Eugène Goüin, Edouard Hentsch, Edmond Joubert, Henri Cernuschi |
Defunct | May 22, 2000 |
Headquarters | Paris, France |
Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas S.A. (Paribas, Bank of Paris and the Netherlands) was a French investment bank based in Paris that in May 2000 merged with Banque National de Paris S.A. to form BNP Paribas. Les Pays-Bas ("The Low-Countries") is French for the Netherlands.
In the early 1820s, Louis-Raphaël Bischoffsheim founded a private banking establishment in Amsterdam in his own name. His brother Jonathan-Raphaël created a branch in Antwerp in 1827 before settling in Brussels in 1836. Having married Henriette Goldschmidt, the daughter of Frankfurt banker Hayum-Salomon Goldschmidt, Louis-Raphaël Bischoffsheim established the Bischoffsheim, Goldschmidt & Cie bank in Paris in 1846, then in London in 1860. In 1863 he merged these banks with the Banque de Crédit et de Dépôt des Pays-Bas, which he had founded in Amsterdam: the Bischoffsheim family thereby established a powerful multinational banking conglomerate.
Separately in 1869, a group of bankers and investors including Adrien Delahante, Edmond Joubert and Henri Cernuschi, with the private bankers Eugène Goüin (Tours), Adolphe-Ernest Fould of the Fould family, E. et A. Schnapper Stern (Paris), Brugmann (Bruxelles), Tietgen (Copenhague), founded the Banque de Paris, with its headquarters near the Opera at 3 rue d'Antin, Paris.
The two banks Banque de Crédit et de Dépôt des Pays-Bas and Banque de Paris would merge on January 27, 1872 to create Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas (Paribas).