Baring Brothers and the Birth of Modern Finance

Austin looks at the United States as a large emerging market with its opportunities and risks, as an investor would look at China, Brazil, or India today. In a case study for economic historians, business professors, students, and executives, this book chronicles the remarkable operations and decision-making of one the largest merchant banks of the 19th century, Baring Brothers & Co., and asks why this bank survived the terrible financial storm created by the Panic of 1837 while others did not. Founded in 1763, Barings was as global as the British Empire it represented. Using archival sources, Austin places the developing American economy of the pre-Civil War years in a world context. He not only discusses the specific success factors that made Barings survive and excel, but what made the bank collapse in the space of a single weekend in 1995.