The Merchant Bankers: A Fascinating, Candid Chronicle of the Great Financial Families of the World Joseph Wechsberg

This fascinating chronicle of the world's great financial families offers candid profiles of the personalities behind seven legendary banking houses: Hambros, which now survives in name only; Barings, the oldest British banking dynasty; the Rothschilds, who amassed the largest private fortune in modern history; the Warburgs, a German dynasty of Venetian origin dating from the sixteenth century; the venerable Hermann Josef Abs, long-time chairman of Deutsche Bank; Lehman Brothers, formerly the oldest continuing partnership in American investing; and the eccentric and culturally savant financier Raffaele Mattioli, who headed Banca Commerciale Italiana. Focusing on figures of late-nineteenth-century London, this chronicle marks the distinctions between the cloistered Old World aristocracy and the rise of the high-stakes investors of Wall Street. Written by a longtime correspondent for the New Yorker, this fascinating account of daring financial adventures and their merchant banker orchest