Youssef Cassis – författare

Funding infrastructure has always been a challenging issue in any country and at any time, yet the topic is still largely unexplored. The social returns of investment in water, roads, railways, or more recently telegraph or communication satellites are often apparent in the long run, but this distant horizon poses special problems to governments and investors. This volume provides a broad overview of the main financing solutions implemented in Europe to supportinfrastructures from the fall of the Roman Empire up to the end of the 20th century.It explores the diverse historical paths pursued in order to solve the problem of infrastructure finance in various European countries, and draws upon the findings of an international and interdisciplinary research project. It brings together case studies by economic historians, economists, and engineers, and the clear taxonomy guides the reader through the financing solutions that have been developed to fund infrastructure over almost three thousand years. The volume is organized into fourparts; after an introductory chapter by the editors, Part One offers ''horizontal'' contributions that cover the history of European infrastructure finance. Parts Two, Three, and Four each focus on a single sector, namely water, transport, and telecommunications. The findings show how history can informthinking on contemporary infrastructure problems.

Private bankers have been defined as owner-managers of their bank, irrespective of their type of activity, which could be in any field of banking, sometimes in conjunction with another one, especially commerce in the earlier periods.Analysing the experiences of European private bankers from the early modern period to the early twenty-first century, this book starts by examining the slow emergence of specialist private bankers, largely from amongst those who provided commercial credit. This initial consideration culminates in a focus upon the roles that they played, both during the onset of the continent''s industrialization, and in orchestrating the finances of the emerging world economy. Its second theme is privatebanking''s waning importance with the rise of joint-stock competitors, which became increasingly apparent in Britain during the mid-nineteenth century, and elsewhere within Europe some decades later. Lastly, attention is paid to the decline of private bankers in the twentieth century -a protracted anduneven decline, combined with the persistence and even the enduring success of some segments of the profession. It concludes with the revival of private banking in the late twentieth century as a response to the development of a new market - the management of personal wealth.

This book originated from the idea that performance is what really matters in business and thus in business history. Yet, surprisingly, the analysis of performances has been neglected by economic and business historians. This book is a first attempt to fill this gap and in doing so provides a totally new approach to European business history.Rather than bringing together national studies, it is based on a single database, measuring performance in eight European countries according to identical criteria. The study spans the entire twentieth century, with particular attention to five benchmark moments: the height of the first globalisation on the eve of the First World War; the late 1920s boom preceding the Great Depression; the European reconstruction of the mid-1950s; the end of ''Golden Age'' in the early 1970s; and the height ofthe second globalisation at the turn of the twenty-first century. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,225 companies, belonging to the three major European economies, Britain, France and Germany; two large south European latecomers, Italy and Spain; two smaller north western countries, Belgium andSweden, and one small Nordic country, Finland. Performance has been measured using two ratios of profitability: return on equity (ROE) and holding return (HR), thus providing a complementary measure of profitability, the former as seen from the firm''s perspective, the latter form the investor''s perspective.The book''s findings, at times surprising, at once confirm and infirm widely held assumptions regarding business performance - regarding strategy and structure, ownership and control, old and new industries, emerging and advanced economies.

What role have the financial elites in European societies and markets played over time? What was their contribution to the recent financial collapse, and how does this compare to previous crises? How have financial elites adjusted to, or influenced, the evolution of the financial system''s regulatory framework over time? Financial Elites and European Banking: Historical Perspectives is a collection of essays dedicated to the European financial elites and thecurrent debate on the role of experts within society.The ambiguities of the globalized economy over the last thirty years, epitomized by growing levels of inequality, have generated a feeling of distrust towards experts. Financial elites have become one of the most scrutinized targets of negative public opinion, triggered by the financial crisis, the high compensations enjoyed both before and after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the obscure nature of their activity. Financial Elites in European Banking presents historicalcomparisons and country and cross-country case studies on financial elites'' adaption and contribution to the transformation of regulatory and cultural context in the wake of a crisis.

What role have the financial elites in European societies and markets played over time? What was their contribution to the recent financial collapse, and how does this compare to previous crises? How have financial elites adjusted to, or influenced, the evolution of the financial system''s regulatory framework over time? Financial Elites and European Banking: Historical Perspectives is a collection of essays dedicated to the European financial elites and thecurrent debate on the role of experts within society.The ambiguities of the globalized economy over the last thirty years, epitomized by growing levels of inequality, have generated a feeling of distrust towards experts. Financial elites have become one of the most scrutinized targets of negative public opinion, triggered by the financial crisis, the high compensations enjoyed both before and after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the obscure nature of their activity. Financial Elites in European Banking presents historicalcomparisons and country and cross-country case studies on financial elites'' adaption and contribution to the transformation of regulatory and cultural context in the wake of a crisis.

This is a major comparative study of big business in the three dominant European nations across the 20th century. In particular the author looks at the character and performance of the major companies in each country at five snapshot moments through the century. In so doing he offers a broad and sweeping analysis of European business amply supported by a wealth of empirical data.Cassis view often challenges widely held assumptions about, for example, entrepreneurial failure in Britain; the relationship between big business and the Nazis in Germany; and the rebuilding of France in the post war period.To fill out his story Cassis looks closely at the role and charcter of the business elites in each country andand their relationship with wider social and political developments.The book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the development of European business and the links between business practice and the wider social and political environment in each country.

London and Paris, the world's two leading financial centres in the nineteenth century, experienced differing fortunes during the twentieth century. While London remained an international financial centre, Paris' influence declined. Yet over the last twenty years deregulation, internationalization, and the advent of the single currency have reactivated their competition in ways reminiscent of their old rivalry before the First World War. This book provides a long-term perspective on the development of each centre, with special attention devoted to the pre-1914 years and to the last decades of the twentieth century, in order to contrast these two eras of globalization. The chapters include both archive-based and synthetic surveys and are written by the leading specialists of the field. This comparison between Europe's two leading capital cities will also provide new insights into two important subjects: the political economy of Britain and France in the twentieth century, and the history of international financial centres. As much as a comparison between London and Paris as international financial centres, this book is an Anglo-French comparison; in other words, it considers, through the prism of finance, several aspects of the two countries' economic, business, social, and political histories. It includes contributions from leading banking, financial, and economic historians, and will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of Financial and Economic History, and the role of London and Paris in particular.

The financial crisis of 2008 aroused widespread interest in banking and financial history among policy makers, academics, journalists, and even bankers, in addition to the wider public. References in the press to the term ''Great Depression'' spiked after the failure of Lehman Brothers in November 2008, with similar surges in references to ''economic history'' at various times during the financial turbulence. In an attempt to better understand the magnitude of the shock, there was a demand for historical parallels. How severe was the financial crash? Was it, in fact, the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression? Were its causes unique or part of a well-known historical pattern? And have financial crises always led to severe depressions?Historical reflection on the recent financial crises and the long-term development of the financial system go hand in hand. This volume provides the material for such a reflection by presenting the state of the art in banking and financial history. Nineteen highly regarded experts present chapters on the economic and financial side of banking and financial activities, primarily though not solely in advanced economies, in a long-term comparative perspective. In addition to paying attention to general issues, not least those related to theoretical and methodological aspects of the discipline, the volume approaches the banking and financial world from four distinct but interrelated angles: financial institutions, financial markets, financial regulation, and financial crises.

The financial crisis of 2008 aroused widespread interest in banking and financial history among policy makers, academics, journalists, and even bankers, in addition to the wider public. References in the press to the term ''Great Depression'' spiked after the failure of Lehman Brothers in November 2008, with similar surges in references to ''economic history'' at various times during the financial turbulence. In an attempt to better understand the magnitude of the shock, there was a demand for historical parallels. How severe was the financial crash? Was it, in fact, the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression? Were its causes unique or part of a well-known historical pattern? And have financial crises always led to severe depressions?Historical reflection on the recent financial crises and the long-term development of the financial system go hand in hand. This volume provides the material for such a reflection by presenting the state of the art in banking and financial history. Nineteen highly regarded experts present chapters on the economic and financial side of banking and financial activities, primarily though not solely in advanced economies, in a long-term comparative perspective. In addition to paying attention to general issues, not least those related to theoretical and methodological aspects of the discipline, the volume approaches the banking and financial world from four distinct but interrelated angles: financial institutions, financial markets, financial regulation, and financial crises.

As the world''s political and economic leaders struggle with the aftermath of the Financial Debacle of 2008, this book asks the question: have financial crises presented opportunities to rebuild the financial system?Examining eight global financial crises since the late nineteenth century, this new historical study offers insights into how the financial landscape - banks, governance, regulation, international cooperation, and balance of power - has been (or failed to be) reshaped after a systemic shock. It includes careful consideration of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the only experience of comparable moment to the recession of the early twenty-first century, yet also marked in its differences.Taking into account not only the economic and business aspects of financial crises, but also their political and socio-cultural dimensions, the book highlights both their idiosyncrasies and common features, and assesses their impact in the broader context of long-term historical development.

This book originated from the idea that performance is what really matters in business and thus in business history. Yet, surprisingly, the analysis of performances has been neglected by economic and business historians. This book is a first attempt to fill this gap and in doing so provides a totally new approach to European business history.Rather than bringing together national studies, it is based on a single database, measuring performance in eight European countries according to identical criteria. The study spans the entire twentieth century, with particular attention to five benchmark moments: the height of the first globalisation on the eve of the First World War; the late 1920s boom preceding the Great Depression; the European reconstruction of the mid-1950s; the end of ''Golden Age'' in the early 1970s; and the height of the second globalisation at the turn of the twenty-first century. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,225 companies, belonging to the three major European economies, Britain, France and Germany; two large south European latecomers, Italy and Spain; two smaller north western countries, Belgium and Sweden, and one small Nordic country, Finland. Performance has been measured using two ratios of profitability: return on equity (ROE) and holding return (HR), thus providing a complementary measure of profitability, the former as seen from the firm''s perspective, the latter form the investor''s perspective. The book''s findings, at times surprising, at once confirm and infirm widely held assumptions regarding business performance - regarding strategy and structure, ownership and control, old and new industries, emerging and advanced economies.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.As well as marking the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the consequent unleashing of the global financial crisis, 2018 is also the year of negotiations on the terms of the UK''s exit from the European Union. Within a decade the banking world has witnessed two epochal events with potential to redraw the map of international financial centres: but how much has this map actually changed since 2008, and how is it likely to change in the near future?International Financial Centres after the Global Financial Crisis and Brexit gathers together leading economic historians, geographers, and other social scientists to focus on the post-2008 developments in key international financial centres. It focuses on the shifting hierarchies of New York, London, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and Tokyo to question whether Asian financial centres have taken advantage of the crisis in the West. It alsoexamines the medium-effects of the crisis, the level of regulation, and the rise of new technology (fintech). By exploring these crucial changes, it questions whether shifts in the financial industry and the global landscape will render these centres unnecessary for the functioning of the global economy, andwhich cities are likely to emerge as hubs of new financial technology.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.As well as marking the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the consequent unleashing of the global financial crisis, 2018 is also the year of negotiations on the terms of the UK''s exit from the European Union. Within a decade the banking world has witnessed two epochal events with potential to redraw the map of international financial centres: but how much has this map actually changed since 2008, and how is it likely to change in the near future?International Financial Centres after the Global Financial Crisis and Brexit gathers together leading economic historians, geographers, and other social scientists to focus on the post-2008 developments in key international financial centres. It focuses on the shifting hierarchies of New York, London, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and Tokyo to question whether Asian financial centres have taken advantage of the crisis in the West. It alsoexamines the medium-effects of the crisis, the level of regulation, and the rise of new technology (fintech). By exploring these crucial changes, it questions whether shifts in the financial industry and the global landscape will render these centres unnecessary for the functioning of the global economy, andwhich cities are likely to emerge as hubs of new financial technology.

A wave of liberalization swept the developed world at end of the twentieth century. From the 1970s and 1980s onwards, most developed countries have passed various measures to liberalize and modernize the financial markets. Each country had its agenda, but most of them have experienced, to a different extent, a change in regulatory regime. This change, often labeled deregulation and associated with the advent of neoliberalism, was sharply contrasting with the previous era of the Bretton Woods system, which has sometimes been portrayed as an era of financial repression. On the other hand, a quick glance at financial regulation today - at the amount of paper it produces, at its complexity, at the number of people involved, and at the resources invested in it - is enough to say that, somehow, there is more regulation today than ever before. In the new system, financial regulation has taken unprecedented importance. As more archival material is becoming available, a better understanding of the fundamental changes in the regulatory environment towards the end of the twentieth century is now possible. What kind of change exactly was deregulation? Did competition between financial regulators lead to a race to the bottom in regulation? Is deregulation responsible for the recurring financial crises which seem to have characterised the international financial system since the 1980s? The movement towards a more liberal regulatory regime was neither linear nor simple. This book - a collection of chapters studying deregulation in various countries and contexts - examines the national and international pathways of deregulation by providing an in-depth analysis of a short but crucial period in a few major countries.

A wave of liberalization swept the developed world at end of the twentieth century. From the 1970s and 1980s onwards, most developed countries have passed various measures to liberalize and modernize the financial markets. Each country had its agenda, but most of them have experienced, to a different extent, a change in regulatory regime. This change, often labeled deregulation and associated with the advent of neoliberalism, was sharply contrasting with the previous era of the Bretton Woods system, which has sometimes been portrayed as an era of financial repression. On the other hand, a quick glance at financial regulation today - at the amount of paper it produces, at its complexity, at the number of people involved, and at the resources invested in it - is enough to say that, somehow, there is more regulation today than ever before. In the new system, financial regulation has taken unprecedented importance. As more archival material is becoming available, a better understanding of the fundamental changes in the regulatory environment towards the end of the twentieth century is now possible. What kind of change exactly was deregulation? Did competition between financial regulators lead to a race to the bottom in regulation? Is deregulation responsible for the recurring financial crises which seem to have characterised the international financial system since the 1980s? The movement towards a more liberal regulatory regime was neither linear nor simple. This book - a collection of chapters studying deregulation in various countries and contexts - examines the national and international pathways of deregulation by providing an in-depth analysis of a short but crucial period in a few major countries.

The chapters in this book reflect on people''s relationships with past financial crises - from public opinion to business leaders and policy makers. In connection with financial crises, Remembering and Learning from Financial Crises addresses three fundamental questions: first, are financial crises remembered, and if so how? Second, have lessons been drawn from past financial crises? And third, have past experiences been used in order to make practical decisions when confronted with a new crisis? These questions are of course related, yet they have been approached from different historical perspectives, using methodologies borrowed from different academic disciplines. One of the objectives of this book is to explore how these approaches can complement each other in order to better understand the relationships between remembering and learning from financial crises and how the past is used by financial institutions. It thus recognises financial crisis as a recurring phenomenon and addresses the impact that this has in a range of public and policy contexts.

The chapters in this book reflect on people''s relationships with past financial crises - from public opinion to business leaders and policy makers. In connection with financial crises, Remembering and Learning from Financial Crises addresses three fundamental questions: first, are financial crises remembered, and if so how? Second, have lessons been drawn from past financial crises? And third, have past experiences been used in order to make practical decisions when confronted with a new crisis? These questions are of course related, yet they have been approached from different historical perspectives, using methodologies borrowed from different academic disciplines. One of the objectives of this book is to explore how these approaches can complement each other in order to better understand the relationships between remembering and learning from financial crises and how the past is used by financial institutions. It thus recognises financial crisis as a recurring phenomenon and addresses the impact that this has in a range of public and policy contexts.

For generations, the uneasy relationship between Britain and France has captured the popular and scholarly imagination. Comparative studies between the two countries abound, from political systems to eating habits: hitherto they have not extended to business history.There is now growing interest in comparative business systems, practices, and performance. In these areas comparison with America, Germany, or Japan have taken precedence. This volume, with contributions from leading British and French experts, explores comparative developments and trends in the two countries which for so long were the guiding lights of Europe and the world. In particular it looks at three main dimensions - the family firm; education and training; and mergers and company structure.With a mixture of case-studies, sectoral analysis, and wider-ranging comparison, the book will be a useful addition to an understanding of the evolution of business organization, competitivness, and performance.

This is a major comparative study of big business in the three dominant European nations across the 20th century. In particular the author looks at the character and performance of the major companies in each country at five snapshot moments through the century. In so doing he offers a broad and sweeping analysis of European business amply supported by a wealth of empirical data. Cassis view often challenges widely held assumptions about, for example, entrepreneurial failure in Britain; the relationship between big business and the Nazis in Germany; and the rebuilding of France in the post war period. To fill out his story Cassis looks closely at the role and charcter of the business elites in each country and and their relationship with wider social and political developments. The book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the development of European business and the links between business practice and the wider social and political environment in each country.

Funding infrastructure has always been a challenging issue in any country and at any time, yet the topic is still largely unexplored. The social returns of investment in water, roads, railways, or more recently telegraph or communication satellites are often apparent in the long run, but this distant horizon poses special problems to governments and investors. This volume provides a broad overview of the main financing solutions implemented in Europe to support infrastructures from the fall of the Roman Empire up to the end of the 20th century. It explores the diverse historical paths pursued in order to solve the problem of infrastructure finance in various European countries, and draws upon the findings of an international and interdisciplinary research project. It brings together case studies by economic historians, economists, and engineers, and the clear taxonomy guides the reader through the financing solutions that have been developed to fund infrastructure over almost three thousand years. The volume is organized into four parts; after an introductory chapter by the editors, Part One offers 'horizontal' contributions that cover the history of European infrastructure finance. Parts Two, Three, and Four each focus on a single sector, namely water, transport, and telecommunications. The findings show how history can inform thinking on contemporary infrastructure problems.

Private bankers have been defined as owner-managers of their bank, irrespective of their type of activity, which could be in any field of banking, sometimes in conjunction with another one, especially commerce in the earlier periods. Analysing the experiences of European private bankers from the early modern period to the early twenty-first century, this book starts by examining the slow emergence of specialist private bankers, largely from amongst those who provided commercial credit. This initial consideration culminates in a focus upon the roles that they played, both during the onset of the continent's industrialization, and in orchestrating the finances of the emerging world economy. Its second theme is private banking's waning importance with the rise of joint-stock competitors, which became increasingly apparent in Britain during the mid-nineteenth century, and elsewhere within Europe some decades later. Lastly, attention is paid to the decline of private bankers in the twentieth century -a protracted and uneven decline, combined with the persistence and even the enduring success of some segments of the profession. It concludes with the revival of private banking in the late twentieth century as a response to the development of a new market - the management of personal wealth.

This book originated from the idea that performance is what really matters in business and thus in business history. Yet, surprisingly, the analysis of performances has been neglected by economic and business historians. This book is a first attempt to fill this gap and in doing so provides a totally new approach to European business history.Rather than bringing together national studies, it is based on a single database, measuring performance in eight European countries according to identical criteria. The study spans the entire twentieth century, with particular attention to five benchmark moments: the height of the first globalisation on the eve of the First World War; the late 1920s boom preceding the Great Depression; the European reconstruction of the mid-1950s; the end of 'Golden Age' in the early 1970s; and the height of the second globalisation at the turn of the twenty-first century. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,225 companies, belonging to the three major European economies, Britain, France and Germany; two large south European latecomers, Italy and Spain; two smaller north western countries, Belgium and Sweden, and one small Nordic country, Finland. Performance has been measured using two ratios of profitability: return on equity (ROE) and holding return (HR), thus providing a complementary measure of profitability, the former as seen from the firm's perspective, the latter form the investor's perspective. The book's findings, at times surprising, at once confirm and infirm widely held assumptions regarding business performance - regarding strategy and structure, ownership and control, old and new industries, emerging and advanced economies.

What role have the financial elites in European societies and markets played over time? What was their contribution to the recent financial collapse, and how does this compare to previous crises? How have financial elites adjusted to, or influenced, the evolution of the financial system's regulatory framework over time? Financial Elites and European Banking: Historical Perspectives is a collection of essays dedicated to the European financial elites and the current debate on the role of experts within society.The ambiguities of the globalized economy over the last thirty years, epitomized by growing levels of inequality, have generated a feeling of distrust towards experts. Financial elites have become one of the most scrutinized targets of negative public opinion, triggered by the financial crisis, the high compensations enjoyed both before and after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the obscure nature of their activity. Financial Elites in European Banking presents historical comparisons and country and cross-country case studies on financial elites' adaption and contribution to the transformation of regulatory and cultural context in the wake of a crisis.

The financial crisis of 2008 aroused widespread interest in banking and financial history among policy makers, academics, journalists, and even bankers, in addition to the wider public. References in the press to the term 'Great Depression' spiked after the failure of Lehman Brothers in November 2008, with similar surges in references to 'economic history' at various times during the financial turbulence.In an attempt to better understand the magnitude of the shock, there was a demand for historical parallels. How severe was the financial crash? Was it, in fact, the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression? Were its causes unique or part of a well-known historical pattern? And have financial crises always led to severe depressions?Historical reflection on the recent financial crises and the long-term development of the financial system go hand in hand. This volume provides the material for such a reflection by presenting the state of the art in banking and financial history. Nineteen highly regarded experts present chapters on the economic and financial side of banking and financial activities, primarily though not solely in advanced economies, in a long-term comparative perspective. In addition to paying attention to general issues, not least those related to theoretical and methodological aspects of the discipline, the volume approaches the banking and financial world from four distinct but interrelated angles: financial institutions, financial markets, financial regulation, and financial crises.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. As well as marking the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the consequent unleashing of the global financial crisis, 2018 is also the year of negotiations on the terms of the UK's exit from the European Union. Within a decade the banking world has witnessed two epochal events with potential to redraw the map of international financial centres: but how much has this map actually changed since 2008, and how is it likely to change in the near future?International Financial Centres after the Global Financial Crisis and Brexit gathers together leading economic historians, geographers, and other social scientists to focus on the post-2008 developments in key international financial centres. It focuses on the shifting hierarchies of New York, London, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and Tokyo to question whether Asian financial centres have taken advantage of the crisis in the West. It also examines the medium-effects of the crisis, the level of regulation, and the rise of new technology (fintech). By exploring these crucial changes, it questions whether shifts in the financial industry and the global landscape will render these centres unnecessary for the functioning of the global economy, and which cities are likely to emerge as hubs of new financial technology.

A wave of liberalization swept the developed world at end of the twentieth century. From the 1970s and 1980s onwards, most developed countries have passed various measures to liberalize and modernize the financial markets. Each country had its agenda, but most of them have experienced, to a different extent, a change in regulatory regime. This change, often labeled deregulation and associated with the advent of neoliberalism, was sharply contrasting with the previous era of the Bretton Woods system, which has sometimes been portrayed as an era of financial repression. On the other hand, a quick glance at financial regulation today - at the amount of paper it produces, at its complexity, at the number of people involved, and at the resources invested in it - is enough to say that, somehow, there is more regulation today than ever before. In the new system, financial regulation has taken unprecedented importance. As more archival material is becoming available, a better understanding of the fundamental changes in the regulatory environment towards the end of the twentieth century is now possible. What kind of change exactly was deregulation? Did competition between financial regulators lead to a race to the bottom in regulation? Is deregulation responsible for the recurring financial crises which seem to have characterised the international financial system since the 1980s? The movement towards a more liberal regulatory regime was neither linear nor simple. This book - a collection of chapters studying deregulation in various countries and contexts - examines the national and international pathways of deregulation by providing an in-depth analysis of a short but crucial period in a few major countries.

The chapters in this book reflect on people's relationships with past financial crises - from public opinion to business leaders and policy makers. In connection with financial crises, Remembering and Learning from Financial Crises addresses three fundamental questions: first, are financial crises remembered, and if so how? Second, have lessons been drawn from past financial crises? And third, have past experiences been used in order to make practical decisions when confronted with a new crisis? These questions are of course related, yet they have been approached from different historical perspectives, using methodologies borrowed from different academic disciplines. One of the objectives of this book is to explore how these approaches can complement each other in order to better understand the relationships between remembering and learning from financial crises and how the past is used by financial institutions. It thus recognises financial crisis as a recurring phenomenon and addresses the impact that this has in a range of public and policy contexts.

Despite the 'return of financial crises' since the end of the Bretton Woods era, a new generation of bankers hardly had any experience or any memory of a previous systemic financial crisis. The events of summer 2007 prompted investors, CEOs, and regulators to investigate the past to understand the present and foresee the future. The 2008 financial crisis strengthened the need to place financial crises in long-term historical perspectives, establish parallels, and make comparisons. Such comparisons, however, have remained sparse and generally reduced past financial crises to stylized facts in a quest for lessons that could be drawn rather than analysed their specifics.This book is a contribution of history to the study of financial crises, with a focus on whether and how the memory of previous crises has persisted, faded, or changed over time. Intertwining memory and narrative representations of the reality, it investigates the reasons why some crises have been selectively remembered and others apparently forgotten. It does so with a focus on the new era of financial instability that followed the end of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in 1973 - a period marked by a series of financial crises (1974, 1982, 1987, 1997, among others); economic, political, and cultural changes (globalization, deregulation, formalized mathematical economics), and culminating in the global financial crisis of 2008.

The book provides a fresh historical perspective on the internationalization of banking business and the emergence of the Euro-Dollar and Euro-Bond markets from the late 1950s to the early 1970s -- a process which laid the foundations of the subsequent financial globalization. Since the mid-1950s, multilateralism and rapidly growing trade among OECD countries, the gradual (though asymmetrical) relaxation of exchange controls, and the return to external convertibility had sowed the seeds of economic interdependence and financial integration. All these factors actively encouraged American and European banks to pursue the expansion of their international business, largely free of regulations and controls affecting their domestic activity. International banking of the 1960s was also the forge of a restless wave of financial innovations. In fact Euro-Dollars (along with other minor Euro-Currencies) and Euro-Bonds fostered the emergence of fast-growing international money and capital markets, mainly based in the City of London, which rapidly became the new frontier of growth for banking business. Aggressive behaviour of American banks in Europe, coupled with an efficient multinational structure and a remarkable degree of financial creativity, added a sharp competitive edge to Euro-banking. Following their multinational customers as much as escaping from cumbersome domestic regulation, US banks rapidly attained a dominant position in London, while establishing at the same time their footholds on the Continent. This volume is based primarily upon largely unexplored archive records and addreses original issues. The causes of the primacy of London as an international financial centre are investigated, as well as the impact of Euro-banking on British clearing banks as a boost towards liability management and business diversification. Some wider perspectives are also included, which focus on innovative strategies designed by European banks -- such as consortium banking and other cooperative ventures -- in response both to the American challenge and to the establishment of the European Community.