Investment Banking History ― National and Comparative Issues (19th-21st Centuries)

The recent financial and banking crisis did reveal the discrepancy between internal management rules and the demands for stability within the divisions of corporate and investment banking by universal banks or within pure investment banks. Their mastership of risks did not balance the variety and breadth of operations, at the expense of transparent and well-structured balance sheets.
The book intends fuel comparisons between historical national case studies and present evolution of investment banking. It will foster arguments about the management of risks, about the portfolio of skills of investment bankers, about the role of senior bankers. Two chapters of issues and of present assessments help giving sense to history through the mobilisation of concepts crossing decades till the recent years, so as to favour deeper thinking about the very nature and good practices of investment banking.

Hubert Bonin is professor in modern economic history at Sciences Po Bordeaux and a member of the GRETHA research centre at Bordeaux University. He is a specialist in the history of services companies, and moreover in French banking history (regional banks, Paris deposit, corporate and investment banks, with several published monography books and a few handbooks). He is currently preparing a large history of French Societe generale.
Carlo Brambilla is lecturer in Economic History in the Department of Economics at the University of Insubria. He got his PhD in Economic History from the Department of Economics, University of Pisa, in 2003. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Economics, University of Bologna and a research fellow at the Economic History Unit, Bocconi University. His main research interests are in financial and banking history. His research focusses especially on issues such as patterns of banking systems.