Banque Franco-Serbe
The Banque Franco-Serbe (BFS, "French-Serbian Bank") was a French bank founded in 1910 to support French projects in the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and Kingdom of Yugoslavia until World War II
.
History
The Banque Franco-Serbe was created in 1910 by a group of French-linked financial institutions, mainly the
Uprava Fondova was larger, and played a central role in the foreign funding of Serbia's war effort during the Balkan Wars.[4]
: vii, 2
In the wake of the Serbian territorial gains at the
Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas (BPPB), became the BFS's majority owner through a capital restructuring in 1928.[1]
The BFS's Parisian head office was initially established in a building that had been acquired by the BUP in 1905 at 14, rue Le Peletier,[6]: 40 and moved in the early 1920s to a new building at 100, rue de la Victoire.[1]
By the late 1930s, the BFS was the only foreign-headquartered bank with large direct operations in Yugoslavia. It had branches in
Kosovska Mitrovica, Niš, and Skopje.[4]: 51 Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, its activities withered and it lost its significant business in Macedonia.[4]: 108-109 The operations of the BFS in Yugoslavia were nationalized by the Communist authorities by December 1946, together with all other banks in the country,[7] and merged into the National Bank of Yugoslavia.[8] The French entity kept existing until at least the 1970s as a subsidiary of the BPPB.[1]
Leadership
- Arsène Henry , Chairman 1910-1928
- Raoul Mallet, Chairman 1928-1937
- Frédéric Pillet-Will (son of the namesake financier ), Chairman 1937-1939
- Félix Bellet, Chairman 1939-?[4]: 51
- Philippe Mallet, Chairman and Chief Executive 1948-1973[1]
Gallery
-
Bitola branch building in January 1917, damaged by fighting on the Macedonian front of World War I
-
The same building in 2014, now a branch of Stopanska Banka
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g "Banque Franco-Serbe" (PDF). Entreprises coloniales françaises. 2016.
- ^ "Banque ottomane (et Banque franco-serbe)". Archives nationales du monde du travail.
- ^ "Société financière d'Orient" (PDF). Entreprises coloniales françaises. 2016.
- ^ a b c d Federal Reserve Board (February 1944), Army Service Forces Manual M355-5 / Civil Affairs Handbook Yugoslavia: Money and Banking, Washington DC: U.S. Army Service Forces
- ^ "Banque Ottomane" (PDF). ICRC. 1930.
- ^ Hubert Bonin (2011), La Banque de l'Union Parisienne (1874/1904-1974). De l'Europe aux Outre-Mers, Publications de la Société française d'histoire des outre-mers
- ^ Jouko J. Hauvonen (1970), Postwar Developments in Money and Banking in Yugoslavia (PDF), International Monetary Fund, p. 564
- ^ Katarina Todić (March 2015), A Traditional Friendship? France and Yugoslavia in the Cold War World, 1945–1969 (PDF), Hamilton, Ontario: McMaster University, p. 80
- ^ Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević (2018), The History of Money in Croatia 1527 – 1941, Zagreb: Croatian National Bank