Morgan Grenfell 1838-1988

The arresting story of one of the oldest and most illustrious merchant banks from its founding in 1838 by the American, George Peabody to Big Bang and the stock market crash of October 1987.

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This is the arresting 150-year story of one of the oldest and most illustrious merchant banks and of the men who made it.

Founded in 1838 by an American, George Peabody, Morgan Grenfell quickly became the most important American banking house in London, and by the turn of the century held an unrivalled position as part of the most powerful investment bank in the world. The book chronicles its role in financing the overseas purchases of Britain and her allies during the First World War, in taking the lead amongst the private London bankers in reconstructing Europe during the 1920s, and in pioneering the new field of corporate finance. In the 1980s Morgan Grenfell took off with a substantial rise in profits and an extraordinarily powerful Corporate Finance Department: an epilogue summarises recent events to the end of 1988 when it decided to exit from securities in London and to concentrate on developing its areas of traditional strength.

Based on a wide range of original sources, this book is unmatched as a banking history: no other book combines the unrestricted access to the bank's archives afforded to the author with a narrative of events up to the 1980s.