Léopold Louis-Dreyfus
| Léopold Louis-Dreyfus | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Léopold Dreyfus 5 March 1833 Sierentz, France |
| Died | 9 April 1915 (aged 82) Paris, France |
| Citizenship | French |
| Occupation | Commodity trader; diplomat |
| Spouse(s) | Émilie Lang |
| Children |
Louis Louis-Dreyfus Charles Louis-Dreyfus Robert Louis-Dreyfus |
| Relatives |
Pierre Louis-Dreyfus (grandson) Gérard Louis-Dreyfus (great-grandson) Julia Louis-Dreyfus (great-great-granddaughter) Robert Louis-Dreyfus (great-grandson) |
Léopold Louis-Dreyfus (5 March 1833 - 9 April 1915) was a French businessman, founder of the Louis Dreyfus Group, and patriarch of the Louis-Dreyfus family.
The French government awarded him the title Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1912.
He was born Léopold Dreyfus to a Jewish family in Sierentz in Alsace in north-eastern France. His parents were Louis Lemlé Dreyfus (1798), a farmer, and Jeannette Victoire (née Hildenfinger; 1803-1837).
As a youth, the younger Dreyfus made frequent trips to nearby Basel, Switzerland, delivering grain for sale from the family farm. In 1851, he began trading wheat from neighbouring farms. He founded a company under his father's name, as he was too young to use his own. The younger Dreyfus later changed his surname to Louis-Dreyfus, but kept the company name without the hyphen.
In 1858, after rapid growth, he moved the company to Berne, Switzerland, where it expanded its operations throughout Europe by purchasing grain from the "breadbaskets" of Eastern Europe and transporting it the hungry markets in Western Europe. In 1864, the company moved to Zurich, Switzerland and in 1872, after the Franco-Prussian War when France ceded Alsace to Germany, Louis Dreyfus chose French citizenship. He moved to the shipping port of Marseille and by 1875 had moved his company's headquarters to Paris.
The development of a transcontinental railroad in Europe combined with a more reliable shipping network and better access to market information – after the development of the telegraph and telephone – enabled the Louis Dreyfus Group to grow rapidly via arbitrage: the taking advantage of price differentials between locations. In 1883, the Louis Dreyfus Group was one of the first companies to engage in futures trading at the Liverpool Corn Trade Association, allowing it to both buy and sell commodities simultaneously. By 1900, the Louis Dreyfus Group was the world's largest grain trader.
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